"V-NRLF 


$B   Sit,    in 


1 


^HIS  book  gives  the  unprofessional  reader  a  succinct 
■*■  notion  of  the  development  of  classic  German 
philosophy  from  Kant  to  E[egel.  Technical  details  are 
omitted,  while  the  ideas  that  are  significant  for  the 
history  of  culture  are  emphasized. 

It  shows  how  German  thought  took  shape  in  the 
struggle  for  German  nationality  against  the  Napoleonic 
menace,  and  how  profoundly  that  crisis  affected  the 
philosophy  of  morals,  of  the  state,  and  of  history  which 
has  since  that  time  penetrated  into  the  common  con- 
sciousness of  Germany. 

Incidentally  it  makes  clear  how  superficial  is  the 
current  accounting  for  the  contemporary  attitude  of 
intellectual  Germany  by  reference  to  Nietzsche,  etc., 
since  that  attitude  is  shown  to  have  its  basis  in  the 
older  idealistic  philosophy. 


Charles  Edward  Rugh 
lflfi7-1958 


educaxioi;  [     -  . 


Professor  of  Education  I 
University  of  California 


GERMAN   PHILOSOPHY 
AND   POLITICS 


BY 

JOHN  DEWEY 

Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

1915 


6*7?/ 


tone. 

OB7. 


Copyright,  1915, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  .COMPANY 


THE   QUINN   A   80DEN    CO.  PRESS 
RAHWAY,    N.   J. 


PREFACE 

The  will  of  John  Calvin  McNair  established  a 
Foundation  at  the  University  of  North  Carolina 
upon  which  public  lectures  are  to  be  given  from 
time  to  time  to  the  members  of  the  University. 
This  book  contains  three  lectures  which  were  given 
in  February  of  this  year  upon  this  Foundation.  It 
is  a  pleasure  to  acknowledge  the  many  courtesies 
enjoyed  during  my  brief  stay  at  Chapel  Hill,  the 
seat  of  the  University. 

J.  D. 

Columbia  University, 

New  York  City,  April,  1915. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I    German  Philosophy  :  The  Two  Worlds  3 

II    German    Moral    and    Political    Phi- 
losophy          47 

III    The  Germanic  Philosophy  of  History  91 

Index 133 


GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY  AND 
POLITICS 


GERMAN  PHILOSOPHY:  THE  TWO 
WORLDS 

The  nature  of  the  influence  of  general  ideas 
upon  practical  affairs  is  a  troubled  question. 
Mind  dislikes  to  find  itself  a  pilgrim  in  an  alien 
world.  A  discovery  that  the  belief  in  the  influ- 
ence of  thought  upon  action  is  an  illusion  would 
leave  men  profoundly  saddened  with  themselves 
and  with  the  world.  Were  it  not  that  the  doctrine 
forbids  any  discovery  influencing  affairs — since  the 
discovery  would  be  an  idea — we  should  say  that 
the  discovery  of  the  wholly  ex  post  facto  and  idle 
character  of  ideas  would  profoundly  influence  sub- 
sequent affairs.  The  strange  thing  is  that  when 
men  had  least  control  over  nature  and  their  own 
affairs,  they  were  most  sure  of  the  efficacy  of 
thought.  The  doctrine  that  nature  does  nothing 
in  vain,  that  it  is  directed  by  purpose,  was  not 
engrafted  by  scholasticism  upon  science ;  it  formu- 
lates an  instinctive  tendency.  And  if  the  doctrine 
8 


4/ 1  ••'      "     THE  TWO  WORLDS 

be  fallacious,  its  pathos  has  a  noble  quality.  It 
testifies  to  the  longing  of  human  thought  for  a 
world  of  its  own  texture.  Yet  just  in  the  degree 
in  which  men,  by  means  of  inventions  and  political 
arrangements,  have  found  ways  of  making  their 
thoughts  effective,  they  have  come  to  question 
whether  any  thinking  is  efficacious.  Our  notions 
in  physical  science  tend  to  reduce  mind  to  a  bare 
spectator  of  a  machine-like  nature  grinding  its 
unrelenting  way.  The  vogue  of  evolutionary  ideas 
has  led  many  to  regard  intelligence  as  a  deposit 
from  history,  not  as  a  force  in  its  making.  We  look 
backward  rather  than  forward ;  and  when  we  look 
forward  we  seem  to  see  but  a  further  unrolling 
of  a  panorama  long  ago  rolled  up  on  a  cosmic 
reel.  Even  Bergson,  who,  to  a  casual  reader,  ap- 
pears to  reveal  vast  unexplored  vistas  of  genuinely 
novel  possibilities,  turns  out,  upon  careful  study, 
to  regard  intellect  (everything  which  in  the  past 
has  gone  by  the  name  of  observation  and  reflec- 
tion) as  but  an  evolutionary  deposit  whose  im- 
portance is  confined  to  the  conservation  of  a  life 
already  achieved,  and  bids  us  trust  to  instinct,  or 
something  akin  to  instinct,  for  the  future: — as  if 
there  were  hope  and  consolation  in  bidding  us  trust 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  5 

to  that  which,  in  any  case,  we  cannot  intelligently 
direct  or  control. 

I  do  not  see  that  the  school  of  history  which 
finds  Bergson  mystic  and  romantic,  which  prides 
itself  upon  its  hard-headed  and  scientific  character, 
comes  out  at  a  different  place.  I  refer  to  the  doc- 
trine of  the  economic  interpretation  of  history  in 
its  extreme  form — which,  so  its  adherents  tell  us, 
is  its  only  logical  form.  It  is  easy  to  follow  them 
when  they  tell  us  that  past  historians  have  ig- 
nored the  great  part  played  by  economic  forces, 
and  that  descriptions  and  explanations  have  been 
correspondingly  superficial.  When  one  reflects 
that  the  great  problems  of  the  present  day  are 
those  attending  economic  reorganization,  one 
might  even  take  the  doctrine  as  a  half-hearted  con- 
fession that  historians  are  really  engaged  in  con- 
struing the  past  in  terms  of  the  problems  and 
interests  of  an  impending  future,  instead  of  re- 
porting a  past  in  order  to  discover  some  mathe- 
matical curve  which  future  events  are  bound  to 
describe.  But  no;  our  strictly  scientific  economic 
interpreters  will  have  it  that  economic  forces  pre- 
sent an  inevitable  evolution,  of  which  state  and 
church,  art  and  literature,  science  and  philosophy 


6  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

are  by-products.  It  is  useless  to  suggest  that 
while  modern  industry  has  given  an  immense  stim- 
ulus to  scientific  inquiry,  yet  nevertheless  the  in- 
dustrial revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century 
comes  after  the  scientific  revolution  of  the  seven- 
teenth.   The  dogma  forbids  any  connection. 

But  when  we  note  that  Marx  gave  it  away  that 
his  materialistic  interpretation  of  history  was  but 
the  Hegelian  idealistic  dialectic  turned  upside 
down,  we  may  grow  wary.  Is  it,  after  all,  history 
we  are  dealing  with  or  another  philosophy  of  his- 
tory? And  when  we  discover  that  the  great  im- 
portance of  the  doctrine  is  urged  upon  us,  when 
we  find  that  we  are  told  that  the  general  recog- 
nition of  its  truth  helps  us  out  of  our  present 
troubles  and  indicates  a  path  for  future  effort,  we 
positively  take  heart.  These  writers  do  not  seem 
to  mean  just  what  they  say.  Like  the  rest  of  us, 
they  are  human,  and  infected  with  a  belief  that 
ideas,  even  highly  abstract  theories,  are  of  efficacy 
in  the  conduct  of  human  affairs  influencing  the 
history  which  is  yet  to  be. 

I  have,  however,  no  intention  of  entering  upon 
this  controversy,  much  less  of  trying  to  settle  it. 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  7 

These  remarks  are  but  preliminary  to  a  considera- 
tion of  some  of  the  practical  affiliations  of  por- 
tions of  the  modern  history  of  philosophical 
thought  with  practical  social  affairs.  And  if  I  set 
forth  my  own  position  in  the  controversy  in  ques- 
tion, the  statement  is  frankly  a  personal  one,  in- 
tended to  make  known  the  prepossessions  with 
which  I  approach  the  discussion  of  the  political 
bearings  of  one  phase  of  modern  philosophy.  I 
do  not  believe,  then,  that  pure  ideas,  or  pure 
thought,  ever  exercised  any  influence  upon  human 
action.  I  believe  that  very  much  of  what  has 
been  presented  as  philosophic  reflection  is  in  effect 
simply  an  idealization,  for  the  sake  of  emotional 
satisfaction,  of  the  brutely  given  state  of  affairs, 
and  is  not  a  genuine  discovery  of  the  practical 
influence  of  ideas.  In  other  words,  I  believe  it 
to  be  esthetic  in  type  even  when  sadly  lacking  in 
esthetic  form.  And  I  believe  it  is  easy  to  exag- 
gerate the  practical  influence  of  even  »the  more 
vital  and  genuine  ideas  of  which  I  am  about  to 
speak. 

But  I  also  believe  that  there  are  no  such  things 
as  pure  ideas  or  pure  reason.  Every  tiving 
thought   represents   a  gesture  made  toward  the 


8  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

world,  an  attitude  taken  to  some  practical  situa- 
tion in  which  we  are  implicated.  Most  of  these 
gestures  are  ephemeral;  they  reveal  the  state  of 
him  who  makes  them  rather  than  effect  a  significant 
alteration  of  conditions.  But  at  some  times  they 
are  congenial  to  a  situation  in  which  men  in  masses 
are  acting  and  suffering.  They  supply  a  model 
for  the  attitudes  of  others;  they  condense  into  a 
dramatic  type  of  action.  They  then  form  what 
we  call  the  "  great "  systems  of  thought.  Not  all 
ideas  perish  with  the  momentary  response.  They 
are  voiced  and  others  hear;  they  are  written  and 
others  read.  Education,  formal  and  informal,  em- 
bodies them  not  so  much  in  other  men's  minds  as 
in  their  permanent  dispositions  of  action.  They 
are  in  the  blood,  and  afford  sustenance  to  conduct ; 
they  are  in  the  muscles  and  men  strike  or  retire. 
Even  emotional  and  esthetic  systems  may  breed 
a  disposition  toward  the  world  and  take  overt 
effect.  The  reactions  thus  engendered  are,  indeed, 
superficial  as  compared  with  those  in  which  more 
primitive  instincts  are  embodied.  The  business  of 
eating  and  drinking,  buying  and  selling,  marry- 
ing and  being  given  in  marriage,  making  war  and 
peace,  gets  somehow  carried  on  along  with  any  and 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  9 

every  system  of  ideas  which  the  world  has  known. 
But  how,  and  when  and  where  and  for  what  men 
do  even  these  things  is  tremendously  affected  by 
the  abstract  ideas  which  get  into  circulation. 

I  take  it  that  I  may  seem  to  be  engaged  in  an 
emphatic  urging  of  the  obvious.  However  it  may 
be  with  a  few  specialized  schools  of  men,  almost 
everybody  takes  it  as  a  matter  of  course  that  ideas 
influence  action  and  help  determine  the  subsequent 
course  of  events.  Yet  there  is  a  purpose  in  this 
insistence.  Most  persons  draw  the  line  at  a  certain 
kind  of  general  ideas.  They  are  especially  prone 
to  regard  the  ideas  which  constitute  philosophic 
theories  as  practically  innocuous — as  more  or  less 
amiable  speculations  significant  at  the  most  for 
moments  of  leisure,  in  moments  of  relief  from  pre- 
occupation with  affairs.  Above  all,  men  take  the 
particular  general  ideas  which  happen  to  affect 
their  own  conduct  of  life  as  normal  and  inevitable. 
Pray  what  other  ideas  would  any  sensible  man 
have  ?  They  forget  the  extent  to  which  these  ideas 
originated  as  parts  of  a  remote  and  technical 
theoretical  system,  which  by  multitudes  of  non- 
reflective  channels  has  infiltrated  into  their  habits 


10  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

of  imagination  and  behavior.  An  expert  intel- 
lectual anatomist,  my  friends,  might  dissect  you 
and  find  Platonic  and  Aristotelian  tissues,  organs 
from  St.  Augustine  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas, 
Locke  and  Descartes,  in  the  make-up  of  the 
ideas  by  which  you  are  habitually  swayed,  and 
find,  indeed,  that  they  and  other  thinkers  of  whose 
names  you  have  never  heard  constitute  a  larger 
part  of  your  mental  structure  than  does  the  Calvin 
or  Kant,  Darwin  or  Spencer,  Hegel  or  Emerson, 
Bergson  or  Browning  to  whom  you  yield  conscious 
allegiance. 

Philosophers  themselves  are  naturally  chiefly  re- 
sponsible for  the  ordinary  estimate  of  their  own 
influence,  or  lack  of  influence.  They  have  been 
taken  mostly  at  their  own  word  as  to  what  they 
were  doing,  and  what  for  the  most  part  they  have 
pretended  to  do  is  radically  different  from  what 
they  have  actually  done.  They  are  quite  negligible 
as  seers  and  reporters  of  ultimate  reality,  or  the 
essential  natures  of  things.  And  it  is  in  this 
aspect  that  they  have  mostly  fancied  seeing  them- 
selves. Their  actual  office  has  been  quite  other. 
They  have  told  about  nature  and  life  and  society 
in  terms  of  collective  human  desire  and  aspiration 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  11 

as  these  were  determined  by  contemporary  dif- 
ficulties and  struggles. 

I  have  spoken  thus  far  as  if  the  influence  of 
general  ideas  upon  action  were  likely  to  be  bene- 
ficial. It  goes  against  the  grain  to  attribute  evil 
to  the  workings  of  intelligence.  But  we  might 
as  well  face  the  dilemma.  What  is  called  pure 
thought,  thought  freed  from  the  empirical  contin- 
gencies of  life,  would,  even  if  it  existed,  be  irrel- 
evant to  the  guidance  of  action.  For  the  latter 
always  operates  amid  the  circumstance  of  contin- 
gencies. And  thinking  which  is  colored  by  time 
and  place  must  always  be  of  a  mixed  quality.  In 
part,  it  will  detect  and  hold  fast  to  more  perma- 
nent tendencies  and  arrangements ;  in  part,  it  will 
take  the  limitations  of  its  own  period  as  neces- 
sary and  universal — even  as  intrinsically  desir- 
able. 

The  traits  which  give  thinking  effectiveness  for 
the  good  give  it  also  potency  for  harm.  A  phys- 
ical catastrophe,  an  earthquake  or  conflagration, 
acts  only  where  it  happens.  While  its  effects  en- 
dure, it  passes  away.  But  it  is  of  the  nature  of 
ideas  to  be  abstract:  that  is  to  say,  severed  from 
the  circumstances  of  their  origin,  and  through 


12  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

embodiment  in  language  capable  of  operating  in 
remote  climes  and  alien  situations.  Time  heals 
physical  ravages,  but  it  may  only  accentuate  the 
evils  of  an  intellectual  catastrophe — for  by  no 
lesser  name  can  we  call  a  systematic  intellectual 
error.  To  one  who  is  professionally  preoccupied 
with  philosophy  there  is  much  in  its  history  which 
is  profoundly  depressing.  He  sees  ideas  which 
were  not  only  natural  but  useful  in  their  native 
time  and  place,  figuring  in  foreign  contexts  so 
as  to  formulate  defects  as  virtues  and  to  give 
rational  sanction  to  brute  facts,  and  to  oppose 
alleged  eternal  truths  to  progress.  He  sees  move- 
ments which  might  have  passed  away  with  change 
of  circumstance  as  casually  as  they  arose,  acquire 
persistence  and  dignity  because  thought  has  taken 
cognizance  of  them  and  given  them  intellectual 
names.  The  witness  of  history  is  that  to  think 
in  general  and  abstract  terms  is  dangerous;  it 
elevates  ideas  beyond  the  situations  in  which  they 
were  born  and  charges  them  with  we  know  not  what 
menace  for  the  future.  And  in  the  past  the  danger 
has  been  the  greater  because  philosophers  have 
so  largely  purported  to  be  concerned  not  with  con- 
temporary problems    of  living,   but   with  essen- 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  13 

tial  Truth  and  Reality  viewed  under  the  form  of 
eternity. 

In  bringing  these  general  considerations  to  a 
close,  I  face  an  embarrassment.  I  must  choose 
some  particular  period  of  intellectual  history  for 
more  concrete  illustration  of  the  mutual  relation- 
ship of  philosophy  and  practical  social  affairs — 
which  latter,  for  the  sake  of  brevity,  I  term 
Politics.  One  is  tempted  to  choose  Plato.  For 
in  spite  of  the  mystic  and  transcendental  coloring 
of  his  thought,  it  was  he  who  defined  philosophy  as 
the  science  of  the  State,  or  the  most  complete  and 
organized  whole  known  to  man;  it  is  no  accident 
that  his  chief  work  is  termed  the  "  Republic."  In 
modern  times,  we  are  struck  by  the  fact  that  Eng- 
lish philosophy  from  Bacon  to  John  Stuart  Mill 
has  been  cultivated  by  men  of  affairs  rather  than 
by  professors,  and  with  a  direct  outlook  upon  so- 
cial interests.  In  France,  the  great  period  of  phi- 
losophy, the  period  of  les  philosophes,  was  the  time 
in  which  were  forged  the  ideas  which  connect  in 
particular  with  the  French  Revolution  and  in  gen- 
eral with  the  conceptions  which  spread  so  rapidly 
through  the  civilized  world,  of  the  indefinite  per- 
fectibility of  humanity,  the  rights  of  man,  and  the 


14  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

promotion  of  a  society  as  wide  as  humanity,  based 
upon  allegiance  to  reason. 

Somewhat  arbitrarily  I  have,  however,  selected 
some  aspects  of  classic  German  thought  for  my 
illustrative  material.  Partly,  I  suppose,  because 
one  is  piqued  by  the  apparent  challenge  which  its 
highly  technical,  professorial  and  predominantly 
a  priori  character  offers  to  the  proposition  that 
there  is  close  connection  between  abstract  thought 
and  the  tendencies  of  collective  life.  More  to  the 
point,  probably,  is  the  fact  that  the  heroic  age 
of  German  thought  lies  almost  within  the  last  cen- 
tury, while  the  creative  period  of  continental 
thought  lies  largely  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
that  of  British  thought  still  earlier.  It  was  Taine, 
the  Frenchman,  who  said  that  all  the  leading  ideas 
of  the  present  day  were  produced  in  Germany  be- 
tween 1780  and  1830.  Above  all,  the  Germans, 
as  we  say,  have  philosophy  in  their  blood.  Such 
phrases  generally  mean  something  not  about 
hereditary  qualities,  but  about  the  social  condi- 
tions under  which  ideas  propagate  and  circulate. 

Now  Germany  is  the  modern  state  which  pro- 
vides the  greatest  facilities  for  general  ideas  to 
take   effect  through  social  inculcation.    Its   sys- 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  15 

tem  of  education  is  adapted  to  that  end. 
Higher  schools  and  universities  in  Germany  are 
really,  not  just  nominally,  under  the  control 
of  the  state  and  part  of  the  state  life.  In 
spite  of  freedom  of  academic  instruction  when 
once  a  teacher  is  installed  in  office,  the  political 
authorities  have  always  taken  a  hand,  at  critical 
junctures,  in  determining  the  selection  of  teachers 
in  subjects  that  had  a  direct  bearing  upon 
political  policies.  Moreover,  one  of  the  chief  func- 
tions of  the  universities  is  the  preparation  of 
future  state  officials.  Legislative  activity  is  dis- 
tinctly subordinate  to  that  of  administration  con- 
ducted by  a  trained  civil  service,  or,  if  you  please, 
bureaucracy.  Membership  in  this  bureaucracy  is 
dependent  upon  university  training.  Philosophy, 
both  directly  and  indirectly,  plays  an  unusually 
large  role  in  the  training.  The  faculty  of  law  does 
not  chiefly  aim  at  the  preparation  of  practicing 
lawyers.  Philosophies  of  jurisprudence  are  essen- 
tial parts  of  the  law  teaching ;  and  every  one  of  the 
classic  philosophers  took  a  hand  in  writing  a  phi- 
losophy of  Law  and  of  the  State.  Moreover,  in 
the  theological  faculties,  which  are  also  organic 
parts  of  state-controlled  institutions,  the  theology 


16  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

and  higher  criticism  of  Protestant  Germany  have 
been  developed,  and  developed  also  in  close  con- 
nection with  philosophical  systems — like  those  of 
Kant,  Schleiermacher  and  Hegel.  In  short,  the 
educational  and  administrative  agencies  of  Ger- 
many provide  ready-made  channels  through  which 
philosophic  ideas  may  flow  on  their  way  to  prac- 
tical affairs. 

Political  public  opinion  hardly  exists  in  Ger- 
many in  the  sense  in  which  it  obtains  in  France, 
Great  Britain  or  this  country.  So  far  as  it  ex- 
ists, the  universities  may  be  said  to  be  its  chief 
organs.  They,  rather  than  the  newspapers, 
crystallize  it  and  give  it  articulate  expression.  In- 
stead of  expressing  surprise  at  the  characteristic 
utterances  of  university  men  with  reference  to  the 
great  war,  we  should  then  rather  turn  to  the  past 
history  in  which  the  ideas  now  uttered  were  gen- 
erated. 

In  an  account  of  German  intellectual  history 
sufficiently  extensive  we  should  have  to  go  back 
at  least  to  Luther.  Fortunately,  for  our  pur- 
poses, what  he  actually  did  and  taught  is  not  so 
important  as  the  more  recent  tradition  concerning 
his   peculiarly   Germanic   status    and   office.    All 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  17 

peoples  are  proud  of  all  their  great  men.  Germany 
is  proud  of  Luther  as  its  greatest  national  hero. 
But  while  most  nations  are  proud  of  their  great 
men,  Germany  is  proud  of  itself  rather  for  pro- 
ducing Luther.  It  finds  him  as  a  Germanic  prod- 
uct quite  natural — nay,  inevitable.  A  belief  in 
the  universal  character  of  his  genius  thus  nat- 
urally is  converted  into  a  belief  of  the  essentially 
universal  quality  of  the  people  who  produced 
him. 

Heine  was  not  disposed  by  birth  or  tempera- 
ment to  overestimate  the  significance  of  Luther. 
But  here  is  what  he  said: 

"  Luther  is  not  only  the  greatest  but  the  most 
German  man  in  our  history.  .  .  .  He  possessed 
qualities  that  we  seldom  see  associated — nay,  that 
we  usually  find  in  the  most  hostile  antagonism. 
He  was  at  once  a  dreamy  mystic  and  a  practical 
man  of  action.  .  .  .  He  was  both  a  cold  scholastic 
word-sifter  and  an  inspired  God-drunk  prophet. 
.  .  .  He  was  full  of  the  awful  reverence  of  God, 
full  of  self-sacrificing  devotion  to  the  Holy  Spirit, 
he  could  lose  himself  entirely  in  pure  spirituality. 
Yet  he  was  fully  acquainted  with  the  glories  of 
this  earth ;  he  knew  how  estimable  they  are ;  it  was 
his  lips  that  uttered  the  famous  maxim — 


18  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

" '  Who  loves  not  woman,  wine  and  song, 
Remains  a  fool  his  whole  life  long.' 

He  was  a  complete  man,  I  might  say  an  absolute 
man,  in  whom  there  was  no  discord  between  matter 
and  spirit.  To  call  him  a  spiritualist  would  be 
as  erroneous  as  to  call  him  a  sensualist.  .  .  . 
Eternal  praise  to  the  man  whom  we  have  to  thank 
for  the  deliverance  of  our  most  precious  posses- 


And  again  speaking  of  Luther's  work : 

"  Thus  was  established  in  Germany  spiritual 
freedom,  or  as  it  is  called,  freedom  of  thought. 
Thought  became  a  right  and  the  decisions  of  rea- 
son legitimate." 

The  specific  correctness  of  the  above  is  of  slight 
importance  as  compared  with  the  universality  of 
the  tradition  which  made  these  ideas  peculiarly 
Germanic,  and  Luther,  therefore,  a  genuine  na- 
tional hero  and  type. 

It  is,  however,  with  Kant  that  I  commence.  In 
Protestant  Germany  his  name  is  almost  always 
associated  with  that  of  Luther.  That  he  brought 
to  consciousness  the  true  meaning  of  the  Lutheran 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  19 

reformation  is  a  commonplace  of  the  German  his- 
torian. One  can  hardly  convey  a  sense  of  the 
unique  position  he  occupies  in  the  German  thought 
of  the  last  two  generations.  It  is  not  that  every 
philosopher  is  a  Kantian,  or  that  the  professed 
Kantians  stick  literally  to  his  text.  Far  from  it. 
But  Kant  must  always  be  reckoned  with.  No  posi- 
tion unlike  his  should  be  taken  up  till  Kant  has 
been  reverently  disposed  of,  and  the  new  position 
evaluated  in  his  terms.  To  scoff  at  him  is  fair 
sacrilege.  In  a  genuine  sense,  he  marks  the  end 
of  the  older  age.  He  if  the  transition  to  distinc- 
tively modern  thought. 

One  shrinks  at  the  attempt  to  compress  even  his 
leading  ideas  into  an  hour.  Fortunately  for  me, 
few  who  read  my  attempt  will  have  sufficient 
acquaintance  with  the  tomes  of  Kantian  in- 
terpretation and  exposition  to  appreciate  the  full 
enormity  of  my  offense.  For  I  cannot  avoid  the 
effort  to  seize  from  out  his  highly  technical  writ- 
ings a  single  idea  and  to  label  that  his  germinal 
idea.  For  only  in  this  way  can  we  get  a  clew  to 
those  general  ideas  with  which  Germany  char- 
acteristically prefers  to  connect  the  aspirations 
and  convictions  that  animate  its  deeds. 


20  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

Adventuring  without  further  preface  into  this 
field,  I  find  that  Kant's  decisive  contribution  is  the 
idea  of  a  dual  legislation  of  reason  by  which  are 
marked  off  two  distinct  realms — that  of  science 
and  that  of  morals.  Each  of  these  two  realms  has 
its  own  final  and  authoritative  constitution:  On 
one  hand,  there  is  the  world  of  sense,  the  world 
of  phenomena  in  space  and  time  in  which  science 
is  at  home ;  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  supersensible, 
the  noumenal  world,  the  world  of  moral  duty  and 
moral  freedom. 

Every  cultivated  man  is  familiar  with  the  con- 
flict of  science  and  religion,  brute  fact  and  ideal 
purpose,  what  is  and  what  ought  to  be,  necessity 
and  freedom.  In  the  domain  of  science  causal  de- 
pendence is  sovereign;  while  freedom  is  lord  of 
moral  action.  It  is  the  proud  boast  of  those  who 
are  Kantian  in  spirit  that  Kant  discovered  laws 
deep  in  the  very  nature  of  things  and  of  human 
experience  whose  recognition  puts  an  end  forever 
to  all  possibility  of  conflict. 

In  principle,  the  discovery  is  as  simple  as  its 
application  is  far-reaching.  Both  science  and 
moral  obligation  exist.  Analysis  shows  that  each 
is  based  upon  laws  supplied  by  one  and  the  same 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  21 

reason  (of  which,  as  he  is  fond  of  saying,  reason 
is  the  legislator) ;  but  laws  of  such  a  nature  that 
their  respective  jurisdictions  can  never  compete. 
The  material  for  the  legislation  of  reason  in  the 
natural  world  is  sense.  In  this  sensible  world  of 
space  and  time,  causal  necessity  reigns :  such  is  the 
decree  of  reason  itself.  Every  attempt  to  find 
freedom,  to  locate  ideals,  to  draw  support  for 
man's  moral  aspirations  in  nature,  is  predoomed  to 
failure.  The  effort  of  reason  to  do  these  things  is 
contrary  to  the  very  nature  of  reason  itself:  it 
is  self-contradictory,  suicidal. 

When  one  considers  the  extent  in  which  religion 
has  been  bound  up  with  belief  in  miracles,  or  de- 
partures from  the  order  of  nature ;  when  one  notes 
how  support  for  morals  has  been  sought  in  natural 
law;  how  morals  have  been  tied  up  with  man's 
natural  tendencies  to  seek  happiness  and  with 
consequences  in  the  way  of  reward  of  virtue  and 
punishment  of  vice ;  how  history  has  been  explained 
as  a  play  of  moral  forces — in  short,  the  extent  to 
which  both  the  grounds  and  the  sanctions  for 
morality  have  been  sought  within  the  time  and 
space  world,  one  realizes  the  scope  of  the  revolu- 
tion wrought  by  Kant,  provided  his  philosophy  be 


22  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

true.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that  men  in  the  past 
have  not  taken  seriously  the  idea  that  every  exist- 
ence in  space,  every  event  in  time,  is  connected  by 
bonds  of  causal  necessity  with  other  existences  and 
events,  and  consequently  have  had  no  motive  for 
the  systematic  pursuit  of  science.  How  is  the  late 
appearance  of  science  in  human  history  to  be  ac- 
counted for?  How  are  we  to  understand  the  com- 
paratively slight  influence  which  science  still  has 
upon  the  conduct  of  life?  Men,  when  they  have  not 
consciously  looked  upon  nature  as  a  scene  of  ca- 
price, have  failed  to  bring  home  to  themselves  that 
nature  is  a  scene  of  the  legislative  activity  of  rea- 
son in  the  material  of  sense.  This  fact  the  Kantian 
philosophy  brings  home  to  man  once  for  all;  it 
brings  it  home  not  as  a  pious  wish,  nor  as  a  pre- 
carious hope  confirmed  empirically  here  and  there 
by  victories  won  by  a  Galileo  or  a  Newton,  but  as 
an  indubitable  fact  necessary  to  the  existence  of 
any  cognitive  experience  at  all.  The  reign  of  law 
in  nature  is  the  work  of  the  same  reason  which 
proceeds  empirically  and  haltingly  to  the  discov- 
ery of  law  here  and  there.  Thus  the  acceptance 
of  the  Kantian  philosophy  not  only  frees  man  at 
a  single  stroke  from  superstition,  sentimentalism 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  23 

and  moral  and  theological  romanticism,  but  gives 
at  the  same  stroke  authorization  and  stimulation 
to  the  detailed  efforts  of  man  to  wrest  from  nature 
her  secrets  of  causal  law.  What  sparse  groups  of 
men  of  natural  science  had  been  doing  for  the 
three  preceding  centuries,  Kant  proclaimed  to  be 
the  manifestation  of  the  essential  constitution 
of  man  as  a  knowing  being.  For  those  who  accept 
the  Kantian  philosophy,  it)  is  accordingly  the 
magna  charta  of  scientific  work:  the  adequate 
formulation  of  the  constitution  which  directs  and 
justifies  their  scientific  inquiries.  It  is  a  truism 
to  say  that  among  the  Germans  as  nowhere  else  has 
developed  a  positive  reverence  for  science.  In  what 
other  land  does  one  find  in  the  organic  law  men- 
tion of  Science,  and  read  in  its  constitution  an 
express  provision  that  "  Science  and  its  teaching 
are  free  " ? 

But  this  expresses  only  half  of  Kant's  work. 
Reason  is  itself  supersensible.  Giving  law  to  the 
material  of  sense  and  so  constituting  nature,  it 
is  in  itself  above  sense  and  nature,  as  a  sovereign 
is  above  his  subjects.  The  supersensible  world  is 
thus  a  more  congenial  field  for  its  legislative  activ- 
ity than  the  physical  world  of  space  and  time. 


24  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

But  is  any  such  field  open  to  human  experience? 
Has  not  Kant  himself  closed  and  locked  the  gates 
in  his  assertion  that  the  entire  operation  of  man's 
knowing  powers  is  confined  to  the  realm  of  sense 
in  which  causal  necessity  dominates?  Yes,  as  far 
as  knowledge  is  concerned.  No,  as  far  as  moral 
obligation  is  concerned.  The  fact  of  duty,  the 
existence  of  a  categorical  command  to  act  thus  and 
so,  no  matter  what  the  pressure  of  physical  sur- 
roundings or  the  incitation  of  animal  inclinations, 
is  as  much  a  fact  as  the  existence  of  knowledge 
of  the  physical  world.  Such  a  command  cannot 
proceed  from  nature.  What  is  cannot  introduce 
man  to  what  ought  to  be,  and  thus  impose  its 
own  opposite  upon  him.  Nature  only  enmeshes 
men  in  its  relentless  machine-like  movement.  The 
very  existence  of  a  command  in  man  to  act  for 
the  sake  of  what  ought  to  be — no  matter  what 
actually  is — is  thus  of  itself  final  proof  of  the 
operation  of  supersensible  reason  within  human 
experience:  not,  indeed,  within  theoretical  or  cog- 
nitive experience,  but  within  moral  experience. 

The  moral  law,  the  law  of  obligation,  thus  pro- 
ceeds from  a  source  in  man  above  reason.  It  is 
token  of  his  membership  as  a  moral  being  in  a 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  25 

kingdom  of  absolute  ends  above  nature.  But  it 
is  also  directed  to  something  in  man  which  is 
equally  above  nature:  it  appeals  to  and  demands 
freedom.  Reason  is  incapable  of  anything  so  irra- 
tional, so  self-contradictory,  as  imposing  a  law 
of  action  to  which  no  faculty  of  action  corre- 
sponds. The  freedom  of  the  moral  will  is  the 
answer  to  the  unqualified  demand  of  duty.  It  is 
not  open  to  man  to  accept  or  reject  this  truth  as 
he  may  see  fit.  It  is  a  principle  of  reason  which 
is  involved  in  every  exercise  of  reason.  In  denying 
it  in  name,  man  none  the  less  acknowledges  it  in 
fact.  Only  men  already  sophisticated  by  vice  who 
are  seeking  an  excuse  for  their  viciousness  ever 
try  to  deny,  even  in  words,  the  response  which 
freedom  makes  to  the  voice  of  duty.  Since,  how- 
ever, freedom  is  an  absolute  stranger  to  the  natural 
and  sensible  world,  man's  possession  of  moral  free- 
dom is  the  final  sign  and  seal  of  his  membership 
in  a  supersensible  world.  The  existence  of  an 
ideal  or  spiritual  realm  with  its  own  laws  is  thus 
certified  to  by  the  fact  of  man's  own  citizenship 
within  it.  But,  once  more,  this  citizenship  and 
this  certification  are  solely  moral.  Scientific  or  in- 
tellectual  warrant   for  it   is   impossible   or  self- 


26  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

contradictory,  for  science  works  by  the  law  of 
causal  necessity  with  respect  to  what  is,  igno- 
rant of  any  law  of  freedom  referring  to  what 
should  be. 

With  the  doors  to  the  supersensible  world  now 
open,  it  is  but  a  short  step  to  religion.  Of  the 
negative  traits  of  true  religion  we  may  be  sure 
in  advance.  It  will  not  be  based  upon  intellectual 
grounds.  Proofs  of  the  existence  of  God,  of  the 
creation  of  nature,  of  the  existence  of  an  imma- 
terial soul  from  the  standpoint  of  knowledge  are 
all  of  them  impossible.  They  transgress  the  limits 
of  knowledge,  since  that  is  confined  to  the  sensible 
world  of  time  and  space.  Neither  will  true  reli- 
gion be  based  upon  historic  facts  such  as  those 
of  Jewish  history  or  the  life  of  Jesus  or  the  author- 
ity of  a  historic  institution  like  a  church.  For 
all  historic  facts  as  such  fall  within  the  realm  of 
time  which  is  sensibly  conditioned.  From  the 
points  of  view  of  natural  theology  and  historic 
religions  Kant  was  greeted  by  his  contemporaries 
as  the  "  all-shattering."  Quite  otherwise  is  it, 
however,  as  to  moral  proofs  of  religious  ideas  and 
ideals.  In  Kant's  own  words :  "  I  have  found  it 
necessary  to  deny  knowledge  of  God,  freedom  and 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  27 

immortality  in  order  to  find  a  place  for  faith  " — 
faith  being  a  moral  act. 

Then  he  proceeds  to  reinterpret  in  terms  of  the 
sensuous  natural  principle  and  the  ideal  rational 
principle  the  main  doctrines  of  Lutheran  Prot- 
estantism. The  doctrines  of  incarnation,  original 
sin,  atonement,  justification  by  faith  and  sanctifi- 
cation,  while  baseless  literally  and  historically,  are 
symbols  of  the  dual  nature  of  man,  as  phenomenal 
and  noumenal.  And  while  Kant  scourges  ecclesi- 
astical religions  so  far  as  they  have  relied  upon 
ceremonies  and  external  authority,  upon  external 
rewards  and  punishments,  yet  he  ascribes  transi- 
tional value  to  them  in  that  they  have  symbolized 
ultimate  moral  truths.  Although  dogmas  are  but 
the  external  vesture  of  inner  truths,  yet  it  may 
be  good  for  us  "  to  continue  to  pay  reverence  to 
the  outward  vesture  since  that  has  served  to  bring 
to  general  acceptance  a  doctrine  which  really  rests 
upon  an  authority  within  the  soul  of  man,  and 
which,  therefore,  needs  no  miracle  to  commend  it." 

It  is  a  precarious  undertaking  to  single  out 
some  one  thing  in  German  philosophy  as  of  typical 
importance  in  understanding  German  national  life. 
Yet  I  am  committed  to  the  venture.     My  convic- 


28  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

tion  is  that  we  have  its  root  idea  in  the  doctrine  of 
I  Kant  concerning  the  two  realms,  one  outer,  phys- 
ical and  necessary,  the  other  inner,  ideal  and  free. 
To  this  we  must  add  that,  in  spite  of  their  sep- 
arateness  and  independence,  the  primacy  always 
lies  with  the  inner.  As  compared  with  this,  the 
philosophy  of  a  Nietzsche,  to  which  so  many  resort 
at  the  present  time  for  explanation  of  what  seems 
to  them  otherwise  inexplicable,  is  but  a  superficial 
and  transitory  wave  of  opinion.  Surely  the  chief 
mark  of  distinctively  German  civilization  is  its 
combination  of  self-conscious  idealism  with  unsur- 
passed technical  efficiency  and  organization  in  the 
varied  fields  of  action.  If  this  is  not  a  realization 
in  fact  of  what  is  found  in  Kant,  I  am  totally  at 
loss  for  a  name  by  which  to  characterize  it.  I  do 
not  mean  that  conscious  adherence  to  the  philoso- 
phy of  Kant  has  been  the  cause  of  the  marvelous 
advances  made  in  Germany  in  the  natural  sciences 
and  in  the  systematic  application  of  the  fruits  of 
intelligence  to  industry,  trade,  commerce,  military 
affairs,  education,  civic  administration  and  indus- 
trial organization.  Such  a  claim  would  be  absurd. 
But  I  do  mean,  primarily,  that  Kant  detected  and 
formulated  the   direction  in   which   the   German 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  29 

genius  was  moving,  so  that  his  philosophy  is  of 
immense  prophetic  significance;  and,  secondarily, 
that  his  formulation  has  furnished  a  banner  and  a 
conscious  creed  which  in  solid  and  definite  fashion 
has  intensified  and  deepened  the  work  actually  un- 
dertaken. 

In  bringing  to  an  imaginative  synthesis  what 
might  have  remained  an  immense  diversity 
of  enterprises,  Kantianism  has  helped  formulate 
a  sense  of  a  national  mission  and  destiny.  Over 
and  above  this,  his  formulation  and  its  influence 
aids  us  to  understand  why  the  German  conscious- 
ness has  never  been  swamped  by  its  technical  ef- 
ficiency and  devotion,  but  has  remained  self- 
consciously, not  to  say  self-righteously,  idealistic. 
Such  a  work  as  Germany  has  undertaken  might 
well  seem  calculated  to  generate  attachment  to  a 
positivistic  or  even  materialistic  philosophy  and 
to  a  utilitarian  ethics.  But  no;  the  teaching  of 
Kant  had  put  mechanism  forever  in  its  subordinate 
place  at  the  very  time  it  inculcated  devotion  to 
mechanism  in  its  place.  Above  and  beyond  as  an 
end,  for  the  sake  of  which  all  technical  achieve- 
ments, all  promotion  of  health,  wealth  and  happi- 
ness, exist,  lies  the  realm  of  inner  freedom,  of  the 


SO  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

ideal  and  the  supersensible.  The  more  the  Ger- 
mans accomplish  in  the  way  of  material  conquest, 
the  more  they  are  conscious  of  fulfilling  an  ideal 
mission;  every  external  conquest  affords  the 
greater  warrant  for  dwelling  in  an  inner  region 
where  mechanism  does  not  intrude.  Thus  it  turns 
out  that  while  the  Germans  have  been,  to  employ 
a  catchword  of  recent  thought,  the  most  technically 
pragmatic  of  all  peoples  in  their  actual  conduct 
of  affairs,  there  is  no  people  so  hostile  to  the  spirit 
of  a  pragmatic  philosophy. 

The  combination  of  devotion  to  mechanism  and 
organization  in  outward  affairs  and  of  loyalty  to 
freedom  and  consciousness  in  the  inner  realm  has 
its  obvious  attractions.  Realized  in  the  common 
temper  of  a  people  it  might  well  seem  invincible. 
Ended  is  the  paralysis  of  action  arising  from  the 
split  between  science  and  useful  achievements  on 
one  side  and  spiritual  and  ideal  aspirations  on 
the  other.  Each  feeds  and  reinforces  the  other. 
Freedom  of  soul  and  subordination  of  action  dwell 
in  harmony.  Obedience,  definite  subjection  and 
control,  detailed  organization  is  the  lesson  en- 
forced by  the  rule  of  causal  necessity  in  the  outer 
world  of  space  and  time  in  which  action  takes 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  SI 

place.  Unlimited  freedom,  the  heightening  of  con- 
sciousness for  its  own  sake,  sheer  reveling  in  noble 
ideals,  the  law  of  the  inner  world.  What  more  can 
mortal  man  ask? 

It  would  not  be  difficult,  I  imagine,  to  fill  the 
three  hours  devoted  to  these  lectures  with  quota- 
tions from  representative  German  authors  to  the 
effect  that  supreme  regard  for  the  inner  meaning 
of  things,  reverence  for  inner  truth  in  disregard 
of  external  consequences  of  advantage  or  disad- 
vantage, is  the  distinguishing  mark  of  the  German 
spirit  as  against,  say,  the  externality  of  the  Latin 
spirit  or  the  utilitarianism  of  Anglo-Saxondom. 
I  content  myself  with  one  quotation,  a  quota- 
tion which  also  indicates  the  same  inclina- 
tion to  treat  historic  facts  as  symbolic  of  great 
truths  which  is  found  in  Kant's  treatment  of 
church  dogmas.  Speaking  of  the  Germanic  lan- 
guages, an  historian  of  German  civilization  says: 

"  While  all  other  Indo-European  languages  al- 
low a  wide  liberty  in  placing  the  accent  and  make 
external  considerations,  such  as  the  quantity  of 
the  syllables  and  euphony,  of  deciding  influence, 
the  Germanic  tribes  show  a  remarkable  and  inten- 
tional transition  to  an  internal  principle  of  ac- 


32  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

centuation.  ...  Of  all  related  peoples  the  Ger- 
manic alone  puts  the  accent  on  the  root  syllable 
of  the  word,  that  is,  on  the  part  that  gives  it  its 
meaning.  There  is  hardly  an  ethnological  fact 
extant  which  gives  so  much  food  for  thought  as 
this.  What  leads  these  people  to  give  up  a  habit 
which  must  have  been  so  old  that  it  had  become 
instinctive,  and  to  evolve  out  of  their  own  minds 
a  principle  which  indicates  a  power  of  discrimina- 
tion far  in  advance  of  anything  we  are  used  to 
attribute  to  the  lower  stages  of  civilization?  Cir- 
cumstances of  which  we  are  not  now  aware  must 
have  compelled  them  to  distinguish  the  inner  es- 
sence of  things  from  their  external  form,  and  must 
have  taught  them  to  appreciate  the  former  as  of 
higher,  indeed  as  of  sole,  importance.  It  is  this 
accentuation  of  the  real  substance  of  things,  the 
ever-powerful  desire  to  discover  this  real  substance, 
and  the  ever-present  impulse  to  give  expression 
to  this  inner  reality  which  has  become  the  con- 
trolling trait  of  the  Germanic  soul.  Hence  the 
conviction  gained  by  countless  unfruitful  efforts, 
that  reason  alone  will  never  get  at  the  true  founda- 
tion of  things ;  hence  the  thoroughness  of  German 
science;  hence  a  great  many  of  the  qualities  that 
explain  Germanic  successes  and  failures;  hence, 
perhaps,  a  certain  stubbornness  and  obstinacy,  the 
unwillingness  to  give  up  a  conviction  once  formed ; 
hence  the  tendency  to  mysticism;  hence  that  con- 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  33 

tinuous  struggle  which  marks  the  history  of  Ger- 
man art, — the  struggle  to  give  to  the  contents 
powerful  and  adequate  expression,  and  to  satisfy 
at  the  same  time  the  requirements  of  esthetic  ele- 
gance and  beauty,  a  struggle  in  which  the  victory 
is  ever  on  the  side  of  truth,  though  it  be  homely, 
over  beauty  of  form  whenever  it  appears  deceitful ; 
hence  the  part  played  by  music  as  the  only  ex- 
pression of  those  imponderable  vibrations  of  the 
soul  for  which  language  seems  to  have  no  words ; 
hence  the  faith  of  the  German  in  his  mission  among 
the  nations  as  a  bringer  of  truth,  as  a  recognizer 
of  the  real  value  of  things  as  against  the  hollow 
shell  of  beautiful  form,  as  the  doer  of  right  deeds 
for  their  own  sake  and  not  for  any  reward  beyond 
the  natural  outcome  of  the  deed  itself." 

The  division  established  between  the  outer 
realm,  in  which  of  course  acts  fall,  and  the  inner 
realm  of  consciousness  explains  what  is  otherwise 
so  paradoxical  to  a  foreigner  in  German  writings : 
The  constant  assertion  that  Germany  brought  to 
the  world  the  conscious  recognition  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  freedom  coupled  with  the  assertion  of  the 
relative  incompetency  of  the  German  folk  en 
masse  for  political  self-direction.  To  one  sat- 
urated by  the  English  tradition  which  identifies 


34  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

freedom  with  power  to  act  upon  one's  ideas,  to 
make  one's  purposes  effective  in  regulation  of 
public  affairs,  the  combination  seems  self-con- 
tradictory. To  the  German  it  is  natural.  Read- 
ers who  have  been  led  by  newspaper  quotations 
to  regard  Bernhardi  as  preaching  simply  a  gospel 
of  superior  force  will  find  in  his  writings  a  con- 
tinual assertion  that  the  German  spirit  is  the  spirit 
of  freedom,  of  complete  intellectual  self-determina- 
tion ;  that  the  Germans  have  "  always  been  the 
standard  bearers  of  free  thought."  We  find  him 
supporting  his  teachings  not  by  appeal  to 
Nietzsche,  but  by  the  Kantian  distinction  between 
the  "  empirical  and  rational  ego." 
It  is  Bernhardi  who  says : 

"  Two  great  movements  were  born  from  the  Ger- 
man intellectual  life,  on  which,  henceforth,  all  the 
intellectual  and  moral  progress  of  mankind  must 
rest: — The  Reformation  and  the  critical  philoso- 
phy. The  Reformation  that  broke  the  intellectual 
yoke  imposed  by  the  Church,  which  checked  all 
free  progress;  and  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason 
which  put  a  stop  to  the  caprice  of  philosophic 
speculation  by  defining  for  the  human  mind  the 
limitations  of  its  capacities  for  knowledge,  and  at 
the  same  time  pointed  out  the  way  in  which  knowl- 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  35 

edge  is  really  possible.  On  this  substructure  was 
developed  the  intellectual  life  of  our  time,  whose 
deepest  significance  consists  in  the  attempt  to 
reconcile  the  result  of  free  inquiry  with  the  reli- 
gious needs  of  the  heart,  and  thus  to  lay  a  founda- 
tion for  the  harmonious  organization  of  mankind. 
.  .  .  The  German  nation  not  only  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  this  great  struggle  for  a  harmonious  devel- 
opment of  humanity  but  took  the  lead  in  it.  We 
are  thus  incurring  an  obligation  for  the  future 
from  which  we  cannot  shrink.  We  must  be  pre- 
pared to  be  the  leader  in  this  campaign  which  is 
being  fought  for  the  highest  stake  that  has  been 
offered  to  human  efforts.  .  .  .  To  no  nation  ex- 
cept the  German  has  it  been  given  to  enjoy  in  its 
inner  self  ■  that  which  is  given  to  mankind  as  a 
whole.'  .  .  .  It  is  this  quality  which  especially  fits 
us  for  leadership  in  the  intellectual  domain  and 
imposes  upon  us  the  obligation  to  maintain  that 
position."  * 

More  significant  than  the  words  themselves 
are  their  occasion  and  the  occupation  of  the  one 
who  utters  them.  Outside  of  Germany,  cavalry 
generals  who  employ  philosophy  to  bring  home 
practical  lessons  are,  I  think,  rare.     Outside  of 

•Bernhardi,  "Germany  and  the  Next  War,"  pp.  73-74. 
Italics  not  in  the  original  text. 


36  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

Germany,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  an  audience 
where  an  appeal  for  military  preparedness  would 
be  reinforced  by  allusions  to  the  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason. 

Yet  only  by  taking  such  statements  seriously 
can  one  understand  the  temper  in  which  opinion 
in  Germany  meets  a  national  crisis.  When  the 
philosopher  Eucken  (who  received  a  Nobel  prize 
for  contributing  to  the  idealistic  literature  of  the 
world)  justifies  the  part  taken  by  Germany  in  a 
world  war  because  the  Germans  alone  do  not  repre- 
sent a  particularistic  and  nationalistic  spirit,  but 
embody  the  "  universalism  n  of  humanity  itself,  he 
utters  a  conviction  bred  in  German  thought  by 
the  ruling  interpretation  of  German  philosophic 
idealism.  By  the  side  of  this  motif  the  glorifica- 
tion of  war  as  a  biologic  necessity,  forced  by  in- 
crease of  population,  is  a  secondary  detail,  giving 
a  totally  false  impression  when  isolated  from  its 
context.  The  main  thing  is  that  Germany,  more 
than  any  other  nation,  in  a  sense  alone  of  all  na- 
tions, embodies  the  essential  principle  of  humanity : 
freedom  of  spirit,  combined  with  thorough  and  de- 
tailed work  in  the  outer  sphere  where  reigns  causal 
law,   where   obedience,   discipline   and   subordina- 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  37 

tion  are  the  necessities  of  successful  organization. 
It  is  perhaps  worth  while  to  recall  that  Kant  lived, 
taught  and  died  in  Konigsberg;  and  that  Konigs- 
berg  was  the  chief  city  of  east  Prussia,  an  island 
still  cut  off  in  his  early  years  from  western 
Prussia,  a  titular  capital  for  the  Prussian  kings 
where  they  went  for  their  coronations.  His  life- 
work  in  philosophy  coincides  essentially  with  the 
political  work  of  Frederick  the  Great,  the  king 
who  combined  a  regime  of  freedom  of  thought  and 
complete  religious  toleration  with  the  most  ex- 
traordinary display  known  in  history  of  adminis- 
trative and  military  efficiency.  Fortunately  for 
our  present  purposes,  Kant,  in  one  of  his  minor 
essays,  has  touched  upon  this  combination  and 
stated  its  philosophy  in  terms  of  his  own  thought. 
The  essay  in  question  is  that  entitled  "  What  is 
the  Enlightenment  ?  "  His  reply  in  substance  is 
that  it  is  the  coming  of  age  on  the  part  of  human- 
ity: the  transition  from  a  state  of  minority  or 
infancy  wherein  man  does  not  dare  to  think  freely 
to  that  period  of  majority  or  maturity  in  which 
mankind  dares  to  use  its  own  power  of  under- 
standing. The  growth  of  this  power  of  free  use 
of  reason  is  the  sole  hope  of  progress  in  human 


38  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

affairs.  External  revolutions  which  are  not  the 
natural  expression  of  an  inner  or  intellectual  revo- 
lution are  of  little  significance.  Genuine  growth 
is  found  in  the  slow  growth  of  science  and  philoso- 
phy and  in  the  gradual  diffusion  throughout  the 
mass  of  the  discoveries  and  conclusions  of  those 
who  are  superior  in  intelligence.  True  freedom 
is  inner  freedom,  freedom  of  thought  together 
with  the  liberty  consequent  upon  it  of  teaching  and 
publication.  To  check  this  rational  freedom  "  is 
a  sin  against  the  very  nature  of  man,  the  primary 
law  of  which  consists  in  just  the  advance  in  ra- 
tional enlightenment." 

In  contrast  with  this  realm  of  inner  freedom 
stands  that  of  civil  and  political  action,  the  prin- 
ciple of  which  is  obedience  or  subordination  to 
constituted  authority.  Kant  illustrates  the  na- 
ture of  the  two  by  the  position  of  a  military  sub- 
ordinate who  is  given  an  order  to  execute  which 
his  reason  tells  him  is  unwise.  His  sole  duty  in 
the  realm  of  practice  is  to  obey — to  do  his  duty. 
But  as  a  member  not  of  the  State  but  of  the  king- 
dom of  science,  he  has  the  right  of  free  inquiry 
and  publication.  Later  he  might  write  upon 
the  campaign  in  which  this  event  took  place  and 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  39 

point  out,  upon  intellectual  grounds,  the  mistake 
involved  in  the  order.  No  wonder  that  Kant  pro- 
claims that  the  age  of  the  enlightenment  is  the 
age  of  Frederick  the  Great.  Yet  we  should  do 
injustice  to  Kant  if  we  inferred  that  he  expected 
this  dualism  of  spheres  of  action,  with  its  twofold 
moral  law  of  freedom  and  obedience,  to  endure 
forever.  By  the  exercise  of  freedom  of  thought, 
and  by  its  publication  and  the  education  which 
should  make  its  results  permeate  the  whole  state, 
the  habits  of  a  nation  will  finally  become  elevated 
to  rationality,  and  the  spread  of  reason  will  make 
it  possible  for  the  government  to  treat  men,  not  as 
cogs  in  a  machine,  but  in  accord  with  the  dignity 
of  rational  creatures. 

Before  leaving  this  theme,  I  must  point  out  one 
aspect  of  the  work  of  reason  thus  far  passed  over. 
Nature,  the  sensible  world  of  space  and  time,  is, 
as  a  knowable  object,  constituted  by  the  legisla- 
tive work  of  reason,  although  constituted  out  of 
a  non-rational  sensible  stuff.  This  determining 
work  of  reason  forms  not  merely  the  Idealism  of 
the  Kantian  philosophy  but  determines  its  em- 
phasis upon  the  a  priori.  The  functions  of  reason 
through  which  nature  is  rendered  a  knowable  ob- 


40  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

ject  cannot  be  derived  from  experience,  for  they 
are  necessary  to  the  existence  of  experience.  The 
details  of  this  a  priori  apparatus  lie  far  outside 
our  present  concern.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  as 
compared  with  some  of  his  successors,  Kant  was 
an  economical  soul  and  got  along  with  only  two 
a  priori  forms  and  twelve  a  priori  categories.  The 
mental  habitudes  generated  by  attachment  to  a 
priori  categories  cannot  however  be  entirely  neg- 
lected in  even  such  a  cursory  discussion  as  the 
present. 

If  one  were  to  follow  the  suggestion  involved 
in  the  lately  quoted  passage  as  to  the  significant 
symbolism  of  the  place  of  the  accent  in  German 
speech,  one  might  discourse  upon  the  deep  mean- 
ing of  the  Capitalization  of  Nouns  in  the  written 
form  of  the  German  language,  together  with  the 
richness  of  the  language  in  abstract  nouns.  One 
might  fancy  that  the  dignity  of  the  common  noun 
substantive,  expressing  as  it  does  the  universal 
or  generic,  has  bred  an  intellectual  deference. 
One  may  fancy  a  whole  nation  of  readers  rever- 
ently bowing  their  heads  at  each  successively  cap- 
italized word.  In  such  fashion  one  might  arrive 
at   a  picture,  not  without  its  truth,  of  what  it 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  41 

means  to  be  devoted  to  a  priori  rational  princi- 
ples. 

A  number  of  times  during  the  course  of  the 
world  war  I  have  heard  someone  remark  that 
he  would  not  so  much  mind  what  the  Germans 
did  if  it  were  not  for  the  reasons  assigned  in  its 
justification.  But  to  rationalize  such  a  tangled 
skein  as  human  experience  is  a  difficult  task.  If 
one  is  in  possession  of  antecedent  rational  con- 
cepts which  are  legislative  for  experience,  the  task 
is  much  simplified.  It  only  remains  to  subsume 
each  empirical  event  under  its  proper  category. 
If  the  outsider  does  not  see  the  applicability  of 
the  concept  to  the  event,  it  may  be  argued  that 
his  blindness  shows  his  ineptness  for  truly  uni- 
versal thinking.  He  is  probably  a  crass  empiric 
who  thinks  in  terms  of  material  consequences  in- 
stead of  upon  the  basis  of  antecedent  informing 
principles  of  reason. 

Thus  it  has  come  about  that  no  moral,  social 
or  political  question  is  adequately  discussed  in  Ger- 
many until  the  matter  in  hand  has  been  properly 
deduced  from  an  exhaustive  determination  of  its 
fundamental  Begriff  or  Wesen.  Or  if  the  material 
is  too  obviously  empirical  to  allow  of  such  deduc- 


42  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

tion,  it  must  at  least  be  placed  under  its  appro- 
priate rational  form.  What  a  convenience,  what 
a  resource,  nay,  what  a  weapon  is  the  Kantian 
distinction  of  a  priori  rational  form  and  a  pos- 
teriori empirical  matter.  Le.t  the  latter  be  as 
brutely  diversified,  as  chaotic  as  you  please. 
There  always  exists  a  form  of  unity  under  which 
it  may  be  brought.  If  the  empirical  facts  are 
recalcitrant,  so  much  the  worse  for  them.  It  only 
shows  how  empirical  they  are.  To  put  them  under 
a  rational  form  is  but  to  subdue  their  irrational 
opposition  to  reason,  or  to  invade  their  lukewarm 
neutrality.  Any  violence  done  them  is  more  than 
indemnified  by  the  favor  of  bringing  them  under 
the  sway  of  a  priori  reason,  the  incarnation  of 
the  Absolute  on  earth. 

Yet  there  are  certain  disadvantages  attached 
to  a  priori  categories.  They  have  a  certain  rigid- 
ity, appalling  to  those  who  have  not  learned  to 
identify  stiffness  with  force.  Empirical  matters 
are  subject  to  revision.  The  strongest  belief  that 
claims  the  support  of  experience  is  subject  to 
modification  when  experience  testifies  against  it. 
But  an  a  priori  conception  is  not  open  to  adverse 
evidence.     There  is  no  court  having  jurisdiction. 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  43 

If,  then,  an  unfortunate  mortal  should  happen  to 
be  imposed  upon  so  that  he  was  led  to  regard  a 
prejudice  or  predilection  as  an  a  priori  truth,  con- 
trary experience  would  have  a  tendency  to  make 
him  the  more  obstinate  in  his  belief.  History 
proves  what  a  dangerous  thing  it  has  been  for 
men,  when  they  try  to  impose  their  will  upon 
other  men,  to  think  of  themselves  as  special  in- 
struments and  organs  of  Deity.  The  danger  is 
equally  great  when  an  a  priori  Reason  is  substi- 
tuted for  a  Divine  Providence.  Empirically 
grounded  truths  do  not  have  a  wide  scope;  they 
do  not  inspire  such  violent  loyalty  to  themselves 
as  ideas  supposed  to  proceed  directly  from  reason 
itself.  But  they  are  discussable;  they  have  a 
humane  and  social  quality,  while  truths  of  pure 
reason  have  a  paradoxical  way,  in  the  end,  of  es- 
caping from  the  arbitrament  of  reasoning.  They 
evade  the  logic  of  experience,  only  to  become,  in  the 
phrase  of  a  recent  writer,  the  spoil  of  a  "  logic 
of  fanaticism."  Weapons  forged  in  the  smithy 
of  the  Absolute  become  brutal  and  cruel  when 
confronted  by  merely  human  resistance. 

The  stiffly  constrained  character  of  an  a  priori 
Reason  manifests  itself  in  another  way.     A  cate- 


44  THE  TWO  WORLDS 

gory  of  pure  reason  is  suspiciously  like  a  pigeon- 
hole. An  American  writer,  speaking  before  the 
present  war,  remarked  with  witty  exaggeration 
that  "  Germany  is  a  monstrous  set  of  pigeonholes, 
and  every  mother's  son  of  a  German  is  pigeoned  in 
his  respective  hole — tagged,  labeled  and  ticketed. 
Germany  is  a  huge  human  check-room,  and  the 
government  carries  the  checks  in  its  pocket." 
John  Locke's  deepest  objection  to  the  older  form 
of  the  a  priori  philosophy,  the  doctrine  of  innate 
ideas,  was  the  readiness  with  which  such  ideas 
become  strongholds  behind  which  authority  shel- 
ters itself  from  questioning.  And  John  Morley 
pointed  out  long  ago  the  undoubted  historic  fact 
that  the  whole  modern  liberal  social  and  political 
movement  has  allied  itself  with  philosophic  em- 
piricism. It  is  hard  here,  as  everywhere,  to  disen- 
tangle cause  and  effect.  But  one  can  at  least  say 
with  considerable  assurance  that  a  hierarchically 
ordered  and  subordered  State  will  feel  an  affinity 
for  a  philosophy  of  fixed  categories,  while  a  flexible 
democratic  society  will,  in  its  crude  empiricism, 
exhibit  loose  ends. 

There  is  a  story  to  the  effect  that  the  good 
townspeople  of  Konigsberg  were  accustomed  to 


THE  TWO  WORLDS  45 

their  watches  by  the  time  at  which  Kant  passed 
upon  his  walks — so  uniform  was  he.  Yielding  to 
the  Teutonic  temptation  to  find  an  inner  meaning 
in  the  outer  event,  one  may  wonder  whether  Ger- 
man thought  has  not  since  Kant's  time  set  its 
intellectual  and  spiritual  clocks  by  the  Kantian 
standard:  the  separation  of  the  inner  and  the 
outer,  with  its  lesson  of  freedom  and  idealism  in 
one  realm,  and  of  mechanism,  efficiency  and  organ- 
ization in  the  other.  A  German  professor  of  phi- 
losophy has  said  that  while  the  Latins  live  in  the 
present  moment,  the  Germans  live  in  the  infinite 
and  ineffable.  His  accusation  (though  I  am  not 
sure  he  meant  it  as  such)  is  not  completely  justi- 
fied. But  it  does  seem  to  be  true  that  the  Germans, 
more  readily  than  other  peoples,  can  withdraw 
themselves  from  the  exigencies  and  contingencies 
of  life  into  a  region  of  Irmerlichkeit  which  at  least 
seems  boundless ;  and  which  can  rarely  be  success- 
fully uttered  save  through  music,  and  a  frail  and 
tender  poetry,  sometimes  domestic,  sometimes 
lyric,  but  always  full  of  mysterious  charm.  But 
technical  ideas,  ideas  about  means  and  instru- 
ments, can  readily  be  externalized  because  the 
outer  world  is  in  truth  their  abiding  home. 


n 


GERMAN  MORAL  AND  POLITICAL 
PHILOSOPHY 

It  is  difficult  to  select  sentences  from  Kant 
which  are  intelligible  to  those  not  trained  in  his 
vocabulary,  unless  the  selection  is  accompanied  by 
an  almost  word-by-word  commentary.  His  writ- 
ings have  proved  an  admirable  terrain  for  the  dis- 
play of  German  Grundlichkeit.  But  I  venture 
upon  the  quotation  of  one  sentence  which  may 
serve  the  purpose  of  at  once  recalling  the  main 
lesson  of  the  previous  lecture  and  furnishing  a 
transition  to  the  theme  of  the  present  hour. 

"  Even  if  an  immeasurable  gulf  is  fixed  between 
the  sensible  realm  of  the  concept  of  nature  and 
the  supersensible  realm  of  the  concept  of  freedom, 
so  that  it  is  not  possible  to  go  from  the  first  to 
the  second  (at  least  by  means  of  the  theoretical 
use  of  reason)  any  more  than  if  they  were  two 
separate  worlds  of  which  the  first  could  have  no 
influence  upon  the  second, — yet  the  second  is 
47 


48      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

meant  to  have  an  influence  upon  the  first.  The 
concept  of  freedom  is  meant  to  actualize  in  the 
world  of  sense  the  purpose  proposed  by  its 
laws."  ... 

That  is,  the  relation  between  the  world  of  space 
and  time  where  physical  causality  reigns  and  the 
moral  world  of  freedom  and  duty  is  not  a  sym- 
metrical one.  The  former  cannot  intrude  into 
the  latter.  But  it  is  the  very  nature  of  moral 
legislation  that  it  is  meant  to  influence  the  world 
of  sense;  its  object  is  to  realize  the  purposes  of 
free  rational  action  within  the  sense  world.  This 
fact  fixes  the  chief  features  of  Kant's  philosophy 
of  Morals  and  of  the  State. 

It  is  a  claim  of  the  admirers  of  Kant  that  he 
first  brought  to  recognition  the  true  and  infinite 
nature  of  the  principle  of  Personality.  On  one 
side,  the  individual  is  homo  phenomenon — a  part 
of  the  scheme  of  nature,  governed  by  its  laws  as 
much  as  any  stone  or  plant.  But  in  virtue  of 
his  citizenship  in  the  kingdom  of  supersensible 
Laws  and  Ends,  he  is  elevated  to  true  universality. 
He  is  no  longer  a  mere  occurrence.  He  is  a  Per- 
son— one  in  whom  the  purpose  of  Humanity  is  in- 
carnate.    In  English  and  American  writings  the 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      49 

terms  subjective  and  subjectivism  usually  carry 
with  them  a  disparaging  color.  Quite  otherwise 
is  it  in  German  literature.  This  sets  the  age  of 
subjectivism,  whose  commencement,  roughly  speak- 
ing, coincides  with  the  influence  of  Kantian 
thought,  in  sharp  opposition  to  the  age  of  individ- 
ualism, as  well  as  to  a  prior  period  of  subordina- 
tion to  external  authority.  Individualism  means 
isolation;  it  means  external  relations  of  human 
beings  with  one  another  and  with  the  world;  it 
looks  at  things  quantitatively,  in  terms  of  wholes 
and  parts.  Subjectivism  means  recognition  of  the 
principle  of  free  personality:  the  self  as  creative, 
occupied  not  with  an  external  world  which  limits  it 
from  without,  but,  through  its  own  self-conscious- 
ness, finding  a  world  within  itself;  and  having 
found  the  universal  within  itself,  setting  to  work  to 
recreate  itself  in  what  had  been  the  external  world, 
and  by  its  own  creative  expansion  in  industry,  art 
and  politics  to  transform  what  had  been  mere  lim- 
iting material  into  a  work  of  its  own.  Free  as  was 
Kant  from  the  sentimental,  the  mystic  and  the 
romantic  phases  of  this  Subjectivism,  we  shall  do 
well  to  bear  it  in  mind  in  thinking  of  his  ethical 
theory.    Personality  means  that  man  as  a  rational 


50     MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

being  does  not  receive  the  end  which  forms  the 
law  of  his  action  from  without,  whether  from  Na- 
ture, the  State  or  from  God,  but  from  his  own 
self.  Morality  is  autonomous;  man,  humanity,  is 
an  end  in  itself.  Obedience  to  the  self-imposed 
law  will  transform  the  sensible  world  (within 
which  falls  all  social  ties  so  far  as  they  spring 
from  natural  instinct  desire)  into  a  form  appro- 
priate to  universal  reason.  Thus  we  may  para- 
phrase the  sentence  quoted  from  Kant. 

The  gospel  of  duty  has  an  invigorating  ring. 
It  is  easy  to  present  it  as  the  most  noble  and  sub- 
lime of  all  moral  doctrines.  What  is  more  worthy 
of  humanity,  what  better  marks  the  separation  of 
man  from  brute,  than  the  will  to  subordinate  selfish 
desire  and  individual  inclination  to  the  commands 
of  stern  and  lofty  duty  ?  And  if  the  idea  of  com- 
mand (which  inevitably  goes  with  the  notion  of 
duty)  carries  a  sinister  suggestion  of  legal  au- 
thority, pains  and  penalties  and  of  subservience 
to  an  external  authority  who  issues  the  commands, 
Kant  seems  to  have  provided  a  final  corrective  in 
insisting  that  duty  is  self-imposed.  Moral  com- 
mands are  imposed  by  the  higher,  supranatural 
self  upon  the  lower  empirical  self,  by  the  rational 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      51 

self  upon  the  self  of  passions  and  inclinations. 
German  philosophy  is  attached  to  antitheses  and 
their  reconciliation  in  a  higher  synthesis.  The 
Kantian  principle  of  Duty  is  a  striking  case  of 
the  reconciliation  of  the  seemingly  conflicting 
ideas  of  freedom  and  authority. 

Unfortunately,  however,  the  balance  cannot  be 
maintained    in    practice.     Kant's    faithful    logic 
compels  him  to  insist  that  the  concept  of  duty  is 
empty  and  formal.     It  tells  men  that  to  do  their 
duty  is  their  supreme  law  of  action,  but  is  silent 
as  to  what  men's  duties  specifically  are.     Kant, 
moreover,  insists,  as  he  is  in  logic  bound  to  do, 
that  the  motive  which  measures   duty   is   wholly 
inner ;  it  is  purely  a  matter  of  inner  consciousness 
C  To  admit  that  consequences  can  be  taken  into  ac- 
l   count  in  deciding  what  duty  is  in  a  particular  case 
\  would  be  to  make  concessions  to  the  empirical  and 
/sensible  world  which  are  fatal  to  the  scheme.    The 
combination     of    these     two     features     of    pure 
internality     and    pure     formalism    leads,     in     a 
world  where  men's  acts  take  place  wholly  in  the 
external  and  empirical  region,  to  serious   conse- 
quences. 

The  dangerous  character  of  these  consequences 


I 


52      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

may  perhaps  be  best  gathered  indirectly  by  means 
of  a  quotation. 

"  While  the  French  people  in  savage  revolt 
against  spiritual  and  secular  despotism  had  broken 
their  chains  and  proclaimed  their  rights,  another 
quite  different  revolution  was  working  in  Prussia 
— the  revolution  of  duty.  The  assertion  of  the 
rights  of  the  individual  leads  ultimately  to  indi- 
vidual irresponsibility  and  to  a  repudiation  of  the 
State.  Immanuel  Kant,  the  founder  of  the  critical 
philosophy,  taught,  in  opposition  to  this  view,  the 
gospel  of  moral  duty,  and  Scharnhorst  grasped 
the  idea  of  universal  military  service.  By  calling 
upon  which  individual  to  sacrifice  property  and 
life  for  the  good  of  the  community,  he  gave  the 
clearest  expression  to  the  idea  of  the  State,  and 
created  a  sound  basis  on  which  the  claims  to  indi- 
vidual rights  might  rest."  * 

The  sudden  jump,  by  means  of  only  a  comma, 
from  the  gospel  of  moral  duty  to  universal  mili- 
tary service  is  much  more  logical  than  the  shock 
which  it  gives  to  an  American  reader  would  indi- 
cate. I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  Kant's 
teaching  was  the  cause  of  Prussia's  adoption  of 
universal  military  service  and  of  the   thorough- 

*  Bernhardi,  "  Germany  and  the  Next  War,"  pp.  63-64. 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      53 

going  subordination  of  individual  happiness  and 
liberty  of  action  to  that  capitalized  entity,  the 
State.  But  I  do  mean  that  when  the  practical 
political  situation  called  for  universal  military 
service  in  order  to  support  and  expand  the  exist- 
ing state,  the  gospel  of  a  Duty  devoid  of  con- 
tent naturally  lent  itself  to  the  consecration  and 
idealization  of  such  specific  duties  as  the  existing 
national  order  might  prescribe.  The  sense  of 
duty  must  gets  its  subject-matter  somewhere,  and 
unless  subjectivism  was  to  revert  to  anarchic  or 
romantic  individualism  (which  is  hardly  in  the 
spirit  of  obedience  to  authoritative  law)  its  appro- 
priate subject-matter  lies  in  the  commands  of  a 
superior.  Concretely  what  the  State  commands 
is  the  congenial  outer  filling  of  a  purely  inner 
sense  of  duty.  That  the  despotism  of  Frederick 
the  Great  and  of  the  Hohenzollerns  who  remained 
true  to  his  policy  was  at  least  that  hitherto  un- 
known thing,  an  enlightened  despotism,  made  the 
identification  easier.  Individuals  have  at  all  times, 
in  epochs  of  stress,  offered  their  supreme  sacrifice 
to  their  country's  good.  In  Germany  this  sacri- 
fice in  times  of  peace  as  well  as  of  war  has  been 
systematically  reinforced  by  an  inner  mystic  sense 


54      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

of  a  Duty  elevating  men  to  the  plane  of  the  uni- 
versal and  eternal. 

h  In  short,  the  sublime  gospel  of  duty  has  its  de- 
fects. Outside  of  the  theological  and  the  Kantian 
moral  traditions,  men  have  generally  agreed  that 
duties  are  relative  to  ends.  Not  the  obligation, 
but  some  purpose,  some  good,  which  the  fulfill- 
ment of  duty  realizes,  is  the  principle  of  morals. 
The  business  of  reason  is  to  see  that  the  end,  the 
good,  for  which  one  acts  is  a  reasonable  one — 
that  is  to  say,  as  wide  and  as  equitable  in  its 
working  out  as  the  situation  permits.  Morals 
which  are  based  upon  consideration  of  good  and 
evil  consequences  not  only  allow,  g but  imperiously 
demand  the  exercise  of  a  discriminating  intelli- 
gence. A  gospel  of  duty  separated  from  empirical 
purposes  and  results  tends  to  gag  intelligence.  It 
substitutes  for  the  work  of  reason  displayed  in 
a  wide  and  distributed  survey  of  consequences  in 
order  to  determine  where  duty  lies  an  inner  con- 
sciousness, empty  of  content,  which  clothes  with 
the  form  of  rationality  the  demands  of  existing 
social  authorities.  A  consciousness  which  is 
not  based  upon  and  checked  by  consideration  of 
actual    results    upon    human     welfare    is    none 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      55 

the    less    socially    irresponsible    because    labeled 
Reason. 

Professor  Eucken  represents  a  type  of  idealistic 
philosophy  which  is  hardly  acceptable  to  strict 
Kantians.  Yet  only  where  the  fundamental  Kant- 
ian ideas  were  current  would  such  ethical  ideas  as 
the  following  flourish: 

"  When  justice  is  cdnsidered  as  a  mere  means 
of  securing  man's  welfare,  and  is  treated  accord- 
ingly— whether  it  be  the  welfare  of  individuals  or 
of  society  as  a  whole  makes  no  essential  difference 
— it  loses  all  its  characteristic  features.  No 
longer  can  it  compel  us  to  see  life  from  its  own 
standpoint;  no  longer  can  it  change  the  existing 
condition  of  things;  no  longer  can  it  sway  our 
hearts  with  the  force  of  a  primitive  passion,  and 
oppose  to  all  consideration  of  consequences  an 
irresistible  spiritual  compulsion.  It  degenerates 
rather  into  the  complaisant  servant  of  utility;  it 
adopts  herself  to  her  demands,  and  in  so  doing 
suffers  inward  annihilation.  It  can  maintain  itself 
only  when  it  comes  as  a  unique  revelation  of  the 
Spiritual  Life  within  our  human  world,  as  a  lofty 
Presence  transcending  all  considerations  of  ex- 
pediency." * 

•  Eucken,  "  The  Meaning  and  Value  of  Life,"  translated 
by  Gibson,  p.  104. 


56     MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

*  Such  writing  is  capable  of  arousing  emotional 
reverberations  in  the  breasts  of  many  persons. 
But  they  are  emotions  which,  if  given  headway, 
smother  intelligence,  and  undermine  its  responsi- 
bility for  promoting  the  actual  goods  of  life.  If 
justice  loses  all  its  characteristic  features  when 
regarded  as  a  means  (the  word  "  mere  "  inserted 
before  "  means  "  speaks  volumes )  of  the  welfare 
of  society  as  a  whole,  then  there  is  no  objective 
and  responsible  criterion  for  justice  at  all.  A 
justice  which,  irrespective  of  the  determination 
of  social  well-being,  proclaims  itself  as  an  irre- 
sistible spiritual  impulsion  possessed!  of  the 
force  of  a  primitive  passion,  is  nothing  but 
a  primitive  passion  clothed  with  a  spiritual  title 
so  that  it  is  protected  from  having  to  render  an 
account  of  itself.  During  an  ordinary  course  of 
things,  it  passes  for  but  an  emotional  indulgence ; 
in  a  time  of  stress  and  strain,  it  exhibits  itself 
as  surrender  of  intelligence  to  passion. 

The  passage  (from  Bernhardi)  quoted  earlier 
puts  the  German  principle  of  duty  in  opposition 
to  the  French  principle  of  rights — a  favorite  con- 
trast in  German  thought.  Men  like  Jeremy  Ben- 
tham  also  found  the  Revolutionary  Rights  of  Man 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      57 

doctrinaire  and  conducing  to  tyranny  rather  than 
to  freedom.  These  Rights  were  a  priori,  like  Duty, 
being  derived  from  the  supposed  nature  or  essence 
of  man,  instead  of  being  adopted  as  empirical  ex- 
pedients to  further  progress  and  happiness.  But 
the  conception  of  duty  is  one-sided,  expressing 
command  on  one  side  and  obedience  on  the  other, 
while  rights  are  at  least  reciprocal.  Rights  are 
social  and  sociable  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of 
French  philosophy.  Put  in  a  less  abstract  form 
than  the  revolutionary  theory  stated  them,  they 
are  things  to  be  discussed  and  measured.  They 
admit  of  more  and  less,  of  compromise  and  ad- 
justment. So  also  does  the  characteristic  moral 
contribution  of  English  thought — intelligent  self- 
interest.  This  is  hardly  an  ultimate  idea.  But 
at  least  it  evokes  a  picture  of  merchants  bargain- 
ing, while  the  categorical  imperative  calls  up  the 
drill  sergeant.     Trafficking  ethics,  in  which  each 


gives  up  something  which  he  wants  toget  some- 
thing which  he  wants  more,  is  not  the  noblest  kind 
of  morals,  but  at  least  it  is  socially  responsible 
as  far  as  it  goes.  "  Give  so  that  it  may  be  given 
to  you  in  return  "  has  at  least  some  tendency  to 
bring  men  together;  it  promotes  agreement.     It 


58      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

requires  deliberation  and  discussion.  This  is 
just  what  the  authoritative  voice  of  a  superior 
will  not  tolerate;  it  is  the  one  unforgiveable 
sin. 

The  morals  of  bargaining,  exchange,  the  mutual 
satisfaction  of  wants  may  be  outlived  in  some 
remote  future,  but  up  to  the  present  they 
play  an  important  part  in  life.  To  me  there  is 
something  uncanny  in  the  scorn  which  German 
ethics,  in  behalf  of  an  unsullied  moral  idealism, 
pours  upon  a  theory  which  takes  cognizance  of 
practical  motives.  In  a  highly  esthetic  people 
one  might  understand  the  display  of  contempt. 
But  when  an  aggressive  and  commercial  nation 
carries  on  commerce  and  war  simply  from 
the  motive  of  obedience  to  duty,  there  is  awakened 
an  unpleasant  suspicion  of  a  suppressed  "  psychic 
•^  complex."  When  Nietzsche  says,  "  Man  does  not 
desire  happiness ;  only  the  Englishman  does  that," 
we  laugh  at  the  fair  hit.  But  persons  who  pro- 
fess no  regard  for  happiness  as  a  test  of  action 
have  an  unfortunate  way  of  living  up  to  their 
principle  by  making  others  wwhappy.  I  should 
entertain  some  suspicion  of  the  complete  sincerity 
of  those  who  profess  disregard  for  their  own  hap- 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      59 

piness,  but  I  should  be  quite  certain  of  their  sin- 
cerity when  it  comes  to  a  question  of  my  hap- 
piness. 

Within  the  Kantian  philosophy  of  morals  there 
is  an  idea  which  conducts  necessarily  to  a  philoso- 
phy of  society  and  the  State.  Leibniz  was  the 
great  German  source  of  the  philosophy  of  the  en- 
lightenment. Harmony  was  the  dominant  thought 
of  this  philosophy;  the  harmony  of  nature  with 
itself  and  with  intelligence ;  the  harmony  of  nature 
with  the  moral  ends  of  humanity.  Although  Kant 
was  a  true  son  of  the  enlightenment,  his  doctrine  of 
the  radically  dual  nature  of  the  legislation  of  Rea- 
son put  an  end  to  its  complacent  optimism.  Ac- 
cording to  Kant,  morality  is  in  no  way  a  work  of 
nature.  It  is  the  achievement  of  the  self-conscious 
reason  of  man  through  conquest  of  nature.  The 
ideal  of  a  final  harmony  remains,  but  it  is  an  ideal 
to  be  won  through  a  battle  with  the  natural  forces 
of  man.  His  breach  with  the  enlightenment  is 
nowhere  as  marked  as  in  his  denial  that  man  is  by 
nature  good.  On  the  contrary,  man  is  by  nature 
evil — that  is,  his  philosophical  rendering  of  the 
doctrine  of  original  sin.  Not  that  the  passions, 
appetites  and  senses  are  of  themselves  evil,  but  they 


60      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

tend  to  usurp  the  sovereignty  of  duty  as  the  mo- 
tivating force  of  human  action.  Hence  morality 
is  a  ceaseless  battle  to  transform  all  the  natural 
desires  of  man  into  willing  servants  of  the  law 
and  purpose  of  reason. 

Even  the  kindly  and  sociable  instincts  of  man, 
in  which  so  many  have  sought  the  basis  of  both 
morality  and  organized  society,  fall  under  Kant's 
condemnation.  As  natural  desires,  they  aspire  to 
an  illegitimate  control  in  man's  motives.  They  are 
parts  of  human  self-love:  the  unlawful  tendency 
to  make  happiness  the  controlling  purpose  of  ac- 
tion. The  natural  relations  of  man  to  man  are 
those  of  an  unsocial  sociableness.  On  the  one 
hand,  men  are  forced  together  by  natural  ties* 
Only  in  social  relations  can  individuals  develop 
their  capacities.  But  no  sooner  do  they  come 
together  than  disintegrating  tendencies  set  in. 
Union  with  his  fellows  give  a  stimulus  to  vanity, 
avarice  and  gaining  power  over  others — traits 
which  cannot  show  in  themselves  in  individuals 
when  they  are  isolated.  This  mutual  antagonism 
is,  however,  more  of  a  force  in  evolving  man  from 
savagery  to  civilization  than  are  the  kindly  and 
sociable  instincts. 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      61 

"  Without  these  unlovely  qualities  which  set 
man  over  against  man  in  strife,  individuals  would 
have  lived  on  in  perfect  harmony,  contentment  and 
mutual  love,  with  all  their  distinctive  abilities 
latent  and  undeveloped." 

In  short,  they  would  have  remained  in  Rous- 
seau's paradise  of  a  state  of  nature,  and 

"  perhaps  Rousseau  was  right  when  he  preferred 
the  savage  state  to  the  state  of  civilization  pro- 
vided we  leave  out  of  account  the  last  stage  to 
which  our  species  is  yet  destined  to  rise." 

But  since  the  condition  of  civilization  is  but  an 
intermediary  between  the  natural  state  and  the 
truly  or  rational  moral  condition  to  which  man 
is  to  rise,  Rousseau  was  wrong. 

"  Thanks  then  be  to  nature  for  the  unsociable- 
ness,  the  spiteful  competition  of  vanity,  the  in- 
satiate desires  for  power  and  gain." 

These  quotations,  selected  from  Kant's  little 
essay  on  an  "  Idea  for  a  Universal  History,"  are 
precious  for  understanding  two  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic traits  of  subsequent  German  thought, 
the   distinctions   made   between   Society   and   the 


62      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

State  and  between  Civilization  and  Culture.  Much 
of  the  trouble  which  has  been  experienced  in  re- 
spect to  the  recent  use  of  Kultur  might  have  been 
allayed  by  a  knowledge  that  Kultur  has  little  in 
common  with  the  English  word  "  culture "  save 
a  likeness  in  sound.  Kultur  is  sharply  antithetical 
to  civilization  in  its  meaning.  Civilization  is  a 
natural  and  largely  unconscious  or  involuntary 
growth.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  a  by-product  of  the 
needs  engendered  when  people  live  close  together. 
It  is  external,  in  short.  Culture,  on  the  other, 
is  deliberate  and  conscious.  It  is  a  fruit  not  of 
men's  natural  motives,  but  of  natural  motives 
which  have  been  transformed  by  the  inner  spirit. 
Kant  made  the  distinction  when  he  said  that  Rous- 
seau was  not  so  far  wrong  in  preferring  savagery 
to  civilization,  since  civilization  meant  simply 
social  decencies  and  elegancies  and  outward  pro- 
prieties, while  morality,  that  is,  the  rule  of  the 
end  of  Reason,  is  necessary  to  culture.  And  the 
real  significance  of  the  term  "  culture  "  becomes 
more  obvious  when  he  adds  that  it  involves  the 
slow  toil  of  education  of  the  Inner  Life,  and  that 
the  attainment  of  culture  on  the  part  of  an  indi- 
vidual  depends    upon    long    effort   by  the    com- 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      63 

munity  to  which  he  belongs.  It  is  not  primarily 
an  individual  trait  or  possession,  but  a  conquest  of 
the  community  won  through  devotion  to  "  duty." 
In  recent  German  literature,  Culture  has  been 
given  even  a  more  sharply  technical  distinc- 
tion from  Civilization  and  one  which  emphasizes 
even  more  its  collective  and  nationalistic  char- 
acter. Civilization  as  external  and  uncontrolled 
by  self-conscious  purpose  includes  such  things  as 
language  in  its  more  spontaneous  colloquial  ex- 
pression, trade,  conventional  manners  or  etiquette, 
and  the  police  activities  of  government.  Kultwr 
comprises  language  used  for  purposes  of  higher 
literature;  commerce  pursued  not  as  means  of 
enriching  individuals  but  as  a  condition  of  the  de- 
velopment of  national  life;  art,  philosophy  (espe- 
cially in  that  untranslatable  thing,  the  "  Welt- 
Anschauung  ")  ;  science,  religion,  and  the  activities 
of  the  state  in  the  nurture  and  expansion  of  the 
other  forms  of  national  genius,  that  is,  its  activi- 
ties in  education  and  the  army.  The  legislation 
of  Bismarck  with  reference  to  certain  Roman 
Catholic  orders  is  nicknamed  Kultwr-kampf,  for 
it  was  conceived  as  embodying  a  struggle  between 
two  radically  different  philosophies  of  life,  the  Ro- 


64      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

man,  or  Italian,  and  the  true  Germanic,  not  simply 
as  a  measure  of  political  expediency.  Thus  it  is 
that  a  trading  and  military  post  like  Kiao-Chou 
is  officially  spoken  of  as  a  "  monument  of  Teu- 
tonic Kultur."  The  war  now  raging  is  conceived 
of  as  an  outer  manifestation  of  a  great  spiritual 
struggle,  in  which  what  is  really  at  stake  is  the 
supreme  value  of  the  Germanic  attitude  in  phi- 
losophy, science  and  social  questions  generally,  the 
"  specifically  German  habits  of  feeling  and  think- 
ing." 

Very  similar  motives  are  at  work  in  the  dis- 
tinction between  society  and  the  State,  which  is 
almost  a  commonplace  of  German  thought.  In 
English  and  American  writings  the  State  is  al- 
most always  used  to  denote  society  in  its  more 
organized  aspects,  or  it  may  be  identified  with 
government  as  a  special  agency  operating  for  the 
collective  interests  of  men  in  association.  But  in 
German  literature  society  is  a  technical  term  and 
means  something  empirical  and,  so  to  speak,  ex- 
ternal ;  while  the  State,  if  not  avowedly  something 
mystic  and  transcendental,  is  at  least  a  moral 
entity,  the  creation  of  self-conscious  reason  operat- 
ing in  behalf  of  the  spiritual  and  ideal  interests 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      65 

of  its  members.  Its  function  is  cultural,  educa- 
tive. Even  when  it  intervenes  in  material  interests, 
as  it  does  in  regulating  lawsuits,  poor  laws,  pro- 
tective tariffs,  etc.,  etc.,  its  action  has  ultimately 
an  ethical  significance:  its  purpose  is  the  further- 
ing of  an  ideal  community.  The  same  thing  is 
to  be  said  of  wars  when  they  are  really  national 
wars,  and  not  merely  dynastic  or  accidental. 

Society  is  an  expression  of  man's  egoistic  na- 
ture; his  natural  seeking  for  personal  advantage 
and  profit.  Its  typical  manifestation  is  in  com- 
petitive economic  struggle  and  in  the  struggle  for 
honor  and  recognized  social  status.  These  have 
their  proper  place ;  but  with  respect  even  to  them 
it  is  the  duty  of  the  State  to  intervene  so  that 
the  struggle  may  contribute  to  ideal  ends  which 
alone  are  universal.  Hence  the  significance  of 
the  force  or  power  of  the  State.  Unlike  other 
forms  of  force,  it  has  a  sort  of  sacred  import,  for 
it  represents  force  consecrated  to  the  assertion 
and  expansion  of  final  goods  which  are  spiritual, 
moral,  rational.  These  absolute  ends  can  be 
maintained  only  in  struggle  against  man's  individ- 
ualistic ends.  Conquest  through  conflict  is  the 
law  of  morals  everywhere. 


66     MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

In  Kant  we  find  only  the  beginnings  of  this 
political  philosophy.  He  is  still  held  back  by  the 
individualism  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Every- 
thing legal  and  political  is  conceived  by  him  as 
external  and  hence  outside  the  strictly  moral  realm 
of  inner  motivation.  Yet  he  is  not  content  to  leave 
the  State  and  its  law  as  a  wholly  unmoral  matter. 
The  natural  motives  of  man  are,  according  to 
Kant  (evidently  following  Hobbes),  love  of 
power,  love  of  gain,  love  of  glory.  These  motives 
are  egoistic;  they  issue  in  strife — in  the  war  of 
all  against  all.  While  such  a  state  of  affairs  does 
not  and  cannot  invade  the  inner  realm  of  duty, 
the  realm  of  the  moral  motive,  it  evidently  pre- 
sents a  regime  in  which  the  conquest  of  the  world 
of  sense  by  the  law  of  reason  cannot  be  effected. 
Man  in  his  rational  or  universal  capacity  must, 
therefore,  will  an  outward  order  of  harmony  in 
which  it  is  at  least  possible  for  acts  dictated  by 
rational  freedom  to  get  a  footing.  Such  an  outer 
order  is  the  State.  Its  province  is  not  to  promote 
moral  freedom  directly — only  the  moral  will  can 
do  that.  But  its  business  is  to  hinder  the  hin- 
drances to  freedom:  to  establish  a  social  condi- 
tion   of    outward    order    in    which    truly    moral 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      67 

acts  may  gradually  evolve  a  kingdom  of  human- 
ity. Thus  while  the  State  does  not  have  a 
directly  moral  scope  of  action  (since  the  coer- 
cion of  motive  is  a  moral  absurdity),  it  does 
have  a  moral  basis  and  an  ultimate  moral  func- 
tion. 

It  is  the  law  of  reason,  "  holy  and  inviolable," 
which  impels  man  to  the  institution  of  the  State, 
not  natural  sociability,  much  less  considerations  of 
expediency.  And  so  necessary  is  the  State  to  hu- 
manity's realization  of  its  moral  purpose  that 
there  can  be  no  right  of  revolution.  The  over- 
throw and  execution  of  the  sovereign  (Kant  evi- 
dently had  the  French  Revolution  and  Louis  XVI 
in  mind )  is  "  an  immortal  and  inexpiable  sin  like 
the  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost  spoken  of  by 
theologians,  which  can  never  be  forgiven  in  this 
world  or  in  the  next." 

Kant  was  enough  of  a  child  of  the  eighteenth 
century  to  be  cosmopolitan,  not  nationalistic,  in 
his  feeling.  Since  humanity  as  a  whole,  in  its 
universality,  alone  truly  corresponds  to  the  uni- 
versality of  reason,  he  upheld  the  ideal  of  an  ulti- 
mate republican  federation  of  states;  he  was  one 
of  the  first  to  proclaim  the  possibility  of  endur- 


68      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

ing  peace  among  nations  on  the  basis  of  such  a 
federated  union  of  mankind. 

The  threatened  domination  of  Europe  by  Na- 
poleon following  on  the  wars  waged  by  republican 
France  put  an  end,  however,  to  cosmopolitanism. 
Since  Germany  was  the  greatest  sufferer  from 
these  wars,  and  since  it  was  obvious  that  the  lack 
of  national  unity,  the  division  of  Germany  into 
a  multitude  of  petty  states,  was  the  great  source  of 
her  weakness;  since  it  was  equally  obvious  that 
Prussia,  the  one  strong  and  centralized  power 
among  the  German  states,  was  the  only  thing 
which  saved  them  all  from  national  extinction, 
subsequent  political  philosophy  in  Germany  res- 
cued the  idea  of  the  State  from  the  somewhat 
ambiguous  moral  position  in  which  Kant  had  left 
it.  Since  a  state  which  is  an  absolute  moral  neces- 
sity and  whose  actions  are  nevertheless  lacking  in 
inherent  moral  quality  is  an  anomaly,  the  doctrine 
almost  calls  for  a  theory  which  shall  make  the 
State  the  supreme  moral  entity. 

Fichte  marks  the  beginning  of  the  transforma- 
tion; and,  in  his  writings,  it  is  easy  to  detect  a 
marked  difference  of  attitude  toward  the  national- 
istic state  before  and  after  1806,  when  in  the  battle 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      69 

of  Jena  Germany  went  down  to  inglorious  defeat. 
From  the  time  of  Fichte,  the  German  philosophy 
of  the  State  blends  with  its  philosophy  of  his- 
tory, so  that  my  reservation  of  the  latter  topic  for 
the  next  section  is  somewhat  arbitrary,  and  I  shall 
not  try  rigidly  to  maintain  the  division  of  themes. 

I  have  already  mentioned  the  fact  that  Kant 
relaxes  the  separation  of  the  moral  realm  of  free- 
dom from  the  sensuous  realm  of  nature  sufficiently 
to  assert  that  the  former  is  meant  to  influence  the 
latter  and  finally  to  subjugate  it.  By  means  of 
the  little  crack  thus  introduced  into  nature,  Fichte 
rewrites  the  Kantian  philosophy.  The  world  of 
sense  must  be  regarded  from  the  very  start  as 
material  which  the  free,  rational,  moral  Ego  has 
created  in  order  to  have  material  for  its  own  ade- 
quate realization  of  will.  Fichte  had  a  longing 
for  an  absolute  unity  which  did  not  afflict  Kant, 
to  whom,  save  for  the  concession  just  referred  to, 
a  complete  separation  of  the  two  operations  of 
legislative  reason  sufficed.  Fichte  was  also  an 
ardently  active  soul,  whose  very  temperament  as- 
sured him  of  the  subordination  of  theoretical 
knowledge  to  moral  action. 

It  would  be  as  difficult  to  give,  in  short  space, 


70      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

an  adequate  sketch  of  Fichte's  philosophy  as  of 
Kant's.  To  him,  however,  reason  was  the  expres- 
sion of  the  will,  not  (as  with  Kant)  the  will  an 
application  of  reason  to  action.  "  Im  Anfang 
war  die  That "  is  good  Fichteanism.  While 
Kant  continued  the  usual  significance  of  the  term 
Reason  (with  only  such  modifications  as  the  ra- 
tionalism of  his  century  had  made  current),  Fichte 
began  the  transformation  which  consummated  in 
later  German  idealism.  If  the  world  of  nature 
and  of  human  relations  is  an  expression  of  reason, 
then  reason  must  be  the  sort  of  thing,  and  have 
the  sort  of  attributes  by  means  of  which  the  world 
may  be  construed,  no  matter  how  far  away  this 
conception  of  reason  takes  us  from  the  usual 
meaning  of  the  term.  To  Fichte  the  formula 
which  best  described  such  aspects  of  the  world  and 
of  life  as  he  was  interested  in  was  effort  at  self- 
realization  through  struggle  with  difficulties  and 
overcoming  opposition.  Hence  his  formula  for 
reason  was  a  Will  which,  having  "  posited  "  itself, 
then  "  posited "  its  antithesis  in  order,  through 
further  action  subjugating  this  opposite,  to  con- 
quer its  own  freedom. 

The  doctrine  of  the  primacy  of  the  Deed,  and 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      71 

of  the  Duty  to  achieve  freedom  through  moral  self- 
assertion  against  obstacles  (which,  after  all,  are 
there  only  to  further  this  self-assertion)  was  one 
which  could,  with  more  or  less  plausibility,  be  de- 
rived from  Kant.  More  to  our  present  point,  it 
was  a  doctrine  which  could  be  preached  with  noble 
moral  fervor  in  connection  with  the  difficulties  and 
needs  of  a  divided  and  conquered  Germany.  Fichte 
saw  himself  as  the  continuator  of  the  work  of 
Luther  and  Kant.  His  final  "  science  of  knowl- 
edge "  brought  the  German  people  alone  of  the 
peoples  of  the  world  into  the  possession  of  the  idea 
and  ideal  of  absolute  freedom.  Hence  the  peculiar 
destiny  of  the  German  scholar  and  the  German 
State.  It  was  the  duty  and  mission  of  German 
science  and  philosophy  to  contribute  to  the  cause 
of  the  spiritual  emancipation  of  humanity.  Kant 
had  already  taught  that  the  acts  of  men  were  to 
become  gradually  permeated  by  a  spirit  of  ration- 
ality till  there  should  be  an  equation  of  inner 
freedom  of  mind  and  outer  freedom  of  action. 
Fichte's  doctrine  demanded  an  acceleration  of  the 
process.  Men  who  have  attained  to  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  absolute  freedom  and  self -activity  must 
necessarily  desire  to  see  around  them  similar  free 


72      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

beings.  The  scholar  who  is  truly  a  scholar  not 
merely  knows,  but  he  knows  the  nature  of  knowl- 
edge— its  place  and  function  as  a  manifestation 
of  the  Absolute.  Hence  he  is,  in  a  peculiar  sense, 
the  direct  manifestation  of  God  in  the  world — the 
true  priest.  And  his  priestly  function  consists 
in  bringing  other  men  to  recognize  moral  free- 
dom in  its  creative  operation.  Such  is  the 
dignity  of  education  as  conducted  by  those  who 
have  attained  true  philosophic  insight. 

Fichte  made  a  specific  application  of  this  idea 
to  his  own  country  and  time.  The  humiliating 
condition  of  contemporary  Germany  was  due  to 
the  prevalence  of  egoism,  selfishness  and  particular- 
ism: to  the  fact  that  men  had  lowered  themselves 
to  the  plane  of  sensuous  life.  The  fall  was  the 
worse  because  the  Germans,  more  than  any  other 
people,  were  by  nature  and  history  conscious  of 
the  ideal  and  spiritual  principle,  the  principle  of 
freedom,  lying  at  the  very  basis  of  all  things.  The 
key  to  the  political  regeneration  of  Germany 
was  to  be  found  in  a  moral  and  spiritual  regen- 
eration effected  by  means  of  education.  The 
key,  amid  political  division,  to  political  unity  was 
to  be  sought  in  devotion  to  moral  unity.     In  this 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      73 

spirit  Fichte  preached  his  "  Addresses  to  the  Ger- 
man Nation."  In  this  spirit  he  collaborated  in 
the  foundation  of  the  University  of  Berlin,  and 
zealously  promoted  all  the  educational  reforms  in- 
troduced by  Stein  and  Humboldt  into  Prussian  life. 
The  conception  of  the  State  as  an  essential 
moral  Being  charged  with  an  indispensable  moral 
function  lay  close  to  these  ideas.  Education  is 
the  means  of  the  advancement  of  humanity  toward 
realization  of  its  divine  perfection.  Education  is 
the  work  of  the  State.  The  syllogism  completes 
itself.  But  in  order  that  the  State  may  carry  on 
its  educational  or  moral  mission  it  must  not  only 
possess  organization  and  commensurate  power,  but 
it  must  also  control  the  conditions  which  secure 
the  possibility  offered  to  the  individuals  composing 
it.  To  adopt  Aristotle's  phrase,  men  must  live 
before  they  can  live  nobly.  The  primary  condi- 
tion of  a  secure  life  is  that  everyone  be  able  to 
live  by  his  own  labor.  Without  this,  moral  self- 
determination  is  a  mockery.  The  business  of  the 
State,  outside  of  its  educational  mission,  is  con- 
cerned with  property,  and  this  business  means  in- 
suring property  to  everyone  as  well  as  protecting 
him  in  what  he  already  possesses.    Moreover,  prop- 


74      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

erty  is  not  mere  physical  possession.  It  has  a 
profound  moral  significance,  for  it  means  the  sub- 
jugation of  physical  things  to  will.  It  is  a  neces- 
sary part  of  the  realization  of  moral  personality: 
the  conquest  of  the  non-ego  by  the  ego.  Since 
property  does  not  mean  mere  appropriation,  but  is 
a  right  recognized  and  validated  by  society  itself, 
property  has  a  social  basis  and  aim.  It  is  an 
expression  not  of  individual  egotism  but  of  the  uni- 
versal will.  Hence  it  is  essential  to  the  very  idea 
of  property  and  of  the  State  that  all  the  members 
of  society  have  an  equal  opportunity  for  prop- 
erty. Hence  it  is  the  duty  of  the  State  to  secure 
to  its  every  member  the  right  to  work  and  the 
reward  of  his  work. 

The  outcome,  as  expressed  in  his  essay  on  "  The 
Closed  Industrial  State,"  is  State  Socialism,  based 
on  moral  and  idealistic  grounds,  not  on  economic 
considerations.  In  order  that  men  may  have  a 
real  opportunity  to  develop  their  moral  person- 
alities, their  right  to  labor  and  to  adequate  living, 
in  return  for  their  labor  must  be  assured.  This 
cannot  happen  in  a  competitive  society.  Industry 
must  be  completely  regulated  by  the  State  if  these 
indispensable  rights  to  labor  and  resulting  com- 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      75 

fort  and  security  of  life  as  means  to  moral  voli- 
tion are  to  be  achieved.  But  a  state  engaged  in 
unrestricted  foreign  trade  will  leave  its  working- 
men  at  the  mercy  of  foreign  conditions.  It  must 
therefore  regulate  or  even  eliminate  foreign  com- 
merce so  far  as  is  necessary  to  secure  its  own  citi- 
zens. The  ultimate  goal  is  a  universal  state  as 
wide  as  humanity,  and  a  state  in  which  each  in- 
dividual will  act  freely,  without  state-secured 
rights  and  state-imposed  obligations.  But  before 
this  cosmopolitan  and  philosophically  anarchic 
condition  can  be  reached,  we  must  pass  through 
a  period  of  the  nationalistic  closed  state.  Thus 
at  the  end  a  wide  gulf  separates  Fichte  from  Kant. 
The  moral  individualism  of  the  latter  has  become 
an  ethical  socialism.  Only  in  and  by  means  of  a 
circle  of  egos  or  personalities  does  a  human  being 
attain  the  moral  reason  and  freedom  which  Kant 
bestowed  upon  him  as  his  birthright.  Only 
through  the  educational  activities  of  the  State  and 
its  complete  regulation  of  the  industrial  activities 
of  its  members  does  the  potential  moral  freedom  of 
individuals  become  an  established  reality. 

If  I  have  devoted  so  much  space  to  Fichte  it 
is    not    because    of    his    direct    influence    upon 


76      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

affairs  or  even  upon  thought.  He  did  not  found 
a  school.  His  system  was  at  once  too  personal 
and  too  formal.  Nevertheless,  he  expressed  ideas 
which,  removed  from  their  special  context  in  his 
system,  were  taken  up  into  the  thought  of  culti- 
vated Germany.  Heine,  speaking  of  the  vogue  of 
systems  of  thought,  says  with  profound  truth  that 
"  nations  have  an  instinctive  presentiment  of  what 
they  require  to  fulfill  their  mission." 

And  Fichte's  thought  infiltrated  through  many 
crevices.  Rodbertus  and  Lasalle,  the  socialists, 
were,  for  example,  profoundly  affected  by  him. 
When  the  latter  was  prosecuted  in  a  criminal  suit 
for  his  "  Programme  of  Workingmen,"  his  reply 
was  that  his  programme  was  a  distinctively  philo- 
sophic utterance,  and  hence  protected  by  the  con- 
stitutional provision  for  freedom  of  science  and  its 
teaching.  And  this  is  his  philosophy  of  the 
State: 

"  The  State  is  the  unity  and  cooperation  of 
individuals  in  a  moral  whole.  .  .  .  The  ultimate 
and  intrinsic  end  of  the  State  is,  therefore,  to 
further  the  positive  unfolding,  the  progressive  de- 
velopment of  human  life.  Its  function  is  to  work 
out  the  true  end  of  man;  that  is  to  say,  the  full 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      77 

degree  of  culture  of  which  human  nature  is  capa- 
ble." 


And  he  quotes  with  approval  the  words: 

"  The  concept  of  the  State  must  be  broadened 
so  as  to  make  the  State  the  contrivance  whereby 
all  human  virtue  is  to  be  realized  to  the  full." 

And  if  he  differs  from  Fichte,  it  is  but  in  the 
assertion  that  since  the  laboring  class  is  the  one 
to  whom  the  need  most  directly  appeals,  it  is  work- 
ingmen  who  must  take  the  lead  in  the  development 
of  the  true  functions  of  the  State. 

Pantheism  is  a  philosophic  nickname  which 
should  be  sparingly  employed;  so  also  should  the 
term  Monism.  To  call  Fichte's  system  an  ethical 
pantheism  and  monism  is  not  to  say  much  that  is 
enlightening.  But  with  free  interpretation,  the 
designation  may  be  highly  significant  in  refer- 
ence to  the  spiritual  temper  of  the  Germany  of 
the  first  part  of  the  nineteenth  century.  For  it 
gives  a  key  to  the  presentiment  of  what  Germany 
needed  to  fulfill  its  mission. 

It  is  a  commonplace  of.  German  historians  that 
its  unity  and  expansion  to  a  great  state  powerful 


78      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

externally,  prosperous  internally,  was  wrought, 
unlike  that  of  any  other  people,  from  within  out- 
ward. In  Lange's  words,  "  our  national  develop- 
ment started  from  the  most  ideal  and  approxi- 
mated more  and  more  to  the  real."  Hegel  and 
Heine  agree  that  in  Germany  the  French  Revo- 
lution and  the  Napoleonic  career  were  paralleled 
by  a  philosophic  revolution  and  an  intellectual 
empire.  You  recall  the  bitter  word  that,  when 
Napoleon  was  finally  conquered  and  Europe  par- 
titioned, to  Germany  was  assigned  the  kingdom  of 
the  clouds.  But  this  aerial  and  tenuous  kingdom 
became  a  mighty  power,  working  with  and  in  the 
statesmen  of  Prussia  and  the  scholars  of  Germany 
to  found  a  kingdom  on  the  solid  earth.  Spiritual 
and  ideal  Germany  made  common  cause  with 
realistic  and  practical  Prussia.  As  says  Von 
Sybel,  the  historian  of  the  "  Founding  of  the  Ger- 
man Empire  " : 

"  Germany  had  been  ruined  through  its  own 
disintegration  and  had  dragged  Prussia  with  it 
into  the  abyss.  It  was  well  known  that  the  wild 
fancies  of  the  Conqueror  hovered  about  the  utter 
annihilation  of  Prussia;  if  this  should  take  place, 
then  east  as  well  as  west  of  the  Elbe,  not  only 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      79 

political  independence,  but  every  trace  of  a  Ger- 
man spirit,  the  German  language  and  customs, 
German  art  and  learning — everything  would  be 
wiped  out  by  the  foreigners.  But  this  fatal 
danger  was  perceived  just  at  the  time  when  every- 
body had  been  looking  up  to  Kant  and  Schiller, 
had  been  admiring  Faust,  the  world-embracing 
masterpiece  of  Goethe's,  and  had  recognized  that 
Alexander  von  Humboldt's  cosmological  studies 
and  Niebuhr's  "  Roman  History "  had  created 
a  new  era  in  European  science  and  learning.  In 
such  intellectual  attainments  the  Germans  felt  that 
they  were  far  superior  to  the  vanquisher  of  the 
world  and  his  great  nation;  and  so  the  political 
interests  of  Prussia  and  the  salvation  of  the  Ger- 
man nationality  exactly  coincided.  Schleier- 
macher's  patriotic  sermons,  Fichte's  stirring  ad- 
dresses to  the  German  people,  Humboldt's  glorious 
founding  of  the  Berlin  University,  served  to  aug- 
ment the  resisting  power  of  Prussia,  while 
Scharnhorst's  recruits  and  militia  were  devoted 
to  the  defense  of  German  honor  and  German  cus- 
toms. Everyone  felt  that  German  nationality 
was  lost  if  Prussia  did  not  come  to  its  rescue,  and 
that,  too,  there  was  no  safety  possible  for  Prussia 
unless  all  Germany  was  free. 

"  What  a  remarkable  providence  it  was  that 
brought  together,  as  in  the  Middle  Ages,  on  this 
ancient   colonial   ground,   a   throng  of  the   most 


80      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

energetic  men  from  all  districts  of  Germany.  For 
neither  Stein  nor  his  follower,  Hardenberg,  nor 
the  generals,  Scharnhorst,  Bluecher  and  Gneisenau, 
nor  the  authors,  Niebuhr,  Fichte  and  K.  F. 
Eichorn,  nor  many  others  who  might  be  men- 
tioned, were  born  in  Prussia;  yet  because  their 
thoughts  centered  in  Germany,  they  had  become 
loyal  Prussians.  The  name  Germany  had  been 
blotted  from  the  political  map  of  Europe,  but 
never  had  so  many  hearts  thrilled  at  the  thought 
of  being  German. 

"  Thus  on  the  most  eastern  frontier  of  German 
life,  in  the  midst  of  troubles  which  seemed  hope- 
less, the  idea  of  German  unity,  which  had  lain 
dormant  for  centuries,  now  sprang  up  in  a  new 
birth.  At  first  this  idea  was  held  exclusively  by 
the  great  men  of  the  times  and  remained  the  in- 
valuable possession  of  the  cultivated  classes;  but 
once  started  it  spread  far  and  wide  among  the 
younger  generation.  .  .  .  But  it  was  easier  to  de- 
feat the  mighty  Napoleon  than  to  bend  the  Ger- 
man sentiments  of  dualism  and  individualism  to 
the  spirit  of  national  unity." 

What  I  have  called  the  ethical  pantheism  and 
monistic  idealism  of  Fichte  (a  type  of  philosophy 
reigning  almost  unchallenged  in  Germany  till  al- 
most the  middle  of  the  century)  was  an  effective 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      81 

weapon  in  fighting  and  winning  this  more  difficult 
battle.  In  his  volume  on  the  "  Romantic  School 
in  Germany,"  Brandes  quotes  from  the  diary  of 
Hoffman  a  passage  written  in  1809. 

"  Seized  by  a  strange  fancy  at  the  ball  on  the 
6th,  I  imagine  myself  looking  at  my  own  Ego 
through  a  kaleidoscope.  All  the  forms  moving 
around  me  are  Egos  and  annoy  me  by  what  they 
do  and  leave  undone." 

It  is  a  temptation  to  find  in  this  passage  a 
symbol  both  of  German  philosophy  and  of  the 
temper  of  Germany  at  the  time.  Its  outer  de- 
feats, its  weakness  in  the  world  of  action,  had 
developed  an  exasperated  introspection.  This 
outer  weakness,  coinciding,  as  Von  Sybel  points 
out,  with  the  bloom  of  Germany  in  art,  philosophy, 
history,  philology  and  philosophy,  made  the  Ego 
of  Germany  the  noblest  contemporary  object  of 
contemplation,  yet  one  surrounded  with  other 
national  Egos  who  offended  by  what  they  did 
and  what  they  did  not  do.  Patriotism,  national 
feeling,  national  consciousness  are  common  enough 
facts.  But  nowhere  save  in  Germany,  in  the  ear- 
lier nineteenth  century,  have  these  sentiments  and 


82      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

impulses  been  transformed  by  deliberate  nurture 
into  a  mystic  cult.  This  was  the  time  when  the 
idea  of  the  Volks-seele,  the  Volks-geist,  was  born ; 
and  the  idea  lost  no  time  in  becoming  a  fact.  Not 
merely  poetry  was  affected  by  it,  but  philology, 
history  and  jurisprudence.  The  so-called  historic 
school  is  its  offspring.  The  science  of  social  psy- 
chology derives  from  it  at  one  remove.  The  soul, 
however,  needed  a  body,  and  (quite  in  accord  with 
German  idealism)  it  formed  a  body  for  itself — the 
German  State  as  a  unified  Empire. 

While  the  idealistic  period  came  first,  it  is  im- 
portant to  bear  in  mind  the  kind  of  idealism  it 
was.  At  this  point  the  pantheistic  allusion  be- 
comes significant.  The  idealism  in  question  was 
not  an  idealism  of  another  world  but  of  this 
world,  and  especially  of  the  State.  The  embodi- 
ment of  the  divine  and  absolute  will  and  ideal  is 
the  existing  world  of  nature  and  of  men.  Espe- 
cially is  the  human  ego  the  authorized  and  cre- 
ative agent  of  absolute  purpose.  The  significance 
of  German  philosophy  was  precisely  to  make 
men  aware  of  their  nature  and  destiny  as  the 
direct  and  active  representatives  of  absolute  and 
creative  purpose. 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      83 

If  I  again  quote  Heine,  it  is  because,  with  his 
contempt  for  technical  philosophy,  he  had  an  inti- 
mate sense  of  its  human  meaning.  Of  German 
pantheistic  idealism,  he  wrote  in  1833  while  it  was 
still  in  its  prime: 

"  God  is  identical  with  the  world.  .  .  .  But  he 
manifests  himself  most  gloriously  in  man,  who 
feels  and  thinks  at  the  same  time,  who  is  capable 
of  distinguishing  his  own  individuality  from  ob- 
jective nature,  whose  intellect  already  bears 
within  itself  the  ideas  that  present  themselves  to 
him  in  the  phenomenal  world.  In  man  Deity 
reaches  self-consciousness,  and  this  self-conscious- 
ness God  again  reveals  through  man.  But  this 
revelation  does  not  take  place  in  and  through 
individual  man,  but  in  and  through  collective  hu- 
manity .  .  .  which  comprehends  and  represents 
in  idea  and  in  reality  the  whole  God-universe.  .  .  . 
It  is  an  error  to  suppose  that  this  religion  leads 
men  to  indifference.  On  the  contrary,  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  divinity  will  inspire  man  with 
enthusiasm  for  its  manifestation,  and  from  this 
moment  the  really  noble  achievements  of  true  hero- 
ism glorify  the  earth." 

In  one  respect,  Heine  was  a  false  prophet.  He 
thought  that   this  philosophy  would  in  the  end 


84      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

accrue  to  the  profit  of  the  radical,  the  republican 
and  revolutionary  party  in  Germany.  The  his- 
tory of  German  liberalism  is  a  complicated  matter. 
Suffice  it  in  general  to  say  that  the  honey  the 
libertarians  hived  was  appropriated  in  the  end  by 
the  party  of  authority.  In  Heine's  assurance 
that  these  ideas  would  in  due  time  issue  in  action 
he  was  profoundly  right.  His  essay  closes  with 
burning  words,  from  which  I  extract  the  fol- 
lowing : 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  a  methodical  people,  such 
as  we,  must  begin  with  the  reformation,  must  then 
occupy  ourselves  with  systems  of  philosophy,  and 
only  after  their  completion  pass  to  the  political 
revolution.  .  .  .  Then  will  appear  Kantians,  as 
little  tolerant  of  piety  in  the  world  of  deeds  as 
in  the  world  of  ideas,  who  will  mercilessly  upturn 
with  sword  and  axe  the  soil  of  our  European  life 
to  extirpate  the  last  remnants  of  the  past.  Then 
will  come  upon  the  scene  armed  Fichteans,  whose 
fanaticism  of  will  is  to  be  restrained  neither  by 
fear  nor  self-interest,  for  they  live  in  the  spirit. 
.  .  .  Most  of  all  to  be  feared  would  be  the  phi- 
losophers of  nature,*  were  they  actively  to  min- 

*  He  refers  to  the  followers  of  Schelling,  who  as  matter 
of  fact  had  little  vogue.  But  his  words  may  not  unjustly 
be  transferred  to  the  naturalistic  schools,  which  have  since 
affected  German  thought. 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      85 

gle.  .  .  .  For  if  the  hand  of  the  Kantian  strikes 
with  strong  unerring  blow;  if  the  Fichtean  cour- 
ageously defies  every  danger,  since  for  him  danger 
has  in  reality  no  existence; — the  Philosopher  of 
Nature  will  be  terrible  in  that  he  has  allied  him- 
self with  the  primitive  powers  of  nature,  in  that 
he  can  conjure  up  the  demoniac  forces  of  old 
German  pantheism;  and  having  done  so,  aroused 
in  him  that  ancient  Germanic  eagerness  whicR 
combats  for  the  joy  of  the  combat  itself.  .  .  . 
Smile  not  at  my  counsel  as  at  the  counsel  of  a 
dreamer.  .  .  .  The  thought  precedes  the  deed  as 
the  lightning  the  thunder.  .  .  .  The  hour  will 
come.  As  on  the  steps  of  an  amphitheater,  the 
nations  will  group  themselves  around  Germany  to 
witness  the  terrible  combat." 

In  my  preoccupation  with  Heine,  I  seem  to  have 
wandered  somewhat  from  our  immediate  topic:  the 
connection  of  the  idealistic  philosophy  with  the 
development  and  organization  of  the  national 
state  of  Germany.  But  the  necessity  of  the  or- 
ganized State  to  care  for  the  moral  interests  of 
mankind  was  an  inherent  part  of  Fichte's  thought. 
At  first,  what  state  was  a  matter  of  indifference. 
In  fact  his  sympathies  were  largely  French  and 
republican.    Before  Jena,  he  writes: 


86      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

"  What  is  the  nation  for  a  truly  civilized  Chris- 
tian European  ?  In  a  general  way,  Europe  itself. 
More  particularly  at  any  time  the  State  which  is 
at  the  head  of  civilization.  .  .  .  With  this  cos- 
mopolitan sense,  we  can  be  tranquil  before  the 
vicissitudes  and  catastrophes  of  history." 

In  1807  he  writes : 

"  The  distinction  between  Prussia  and  the  rest 
of  Germany  is  external,  arbitrary  and  fortuitous. 
The  distinction  between  Germany  and  the  rest  of 
Europe  is  founded  in  nature." 

The  seeming  gulf  between  the  two  ideas  is  easily 
bridged.  The  "  Addresses  on  the  Fundamental 
Features  of  the  Present  Age  "  had  taught  that  the 
end  of  humanity  on  earth  is  the  establishment 
of  a  kingdom  in  which  all  relations  of  humanity 
are  determined  with  freedom  or  according  to  Rea- 
son— according  to  Reason  as  conceived  by  the 
Fichtean  formula.  In  his  "  Addresses  to  the 
German  Nation,"  in  1807-08,  the  unique  mission 
of  Germany  in  the  establishment  of  this  kingdom 
is  urged  as  a  motive  for  securing  national  unity 
and  the  overthrow  of  the  conqueror.  The  Ger- 
mans are  the  sole  people  who  recognize  the  prin- 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      87 

ciples  of  spiritual  freedom,  of  freedom  won  by 
action  in  accord  with  reason.  Faithfulness  to  this 
mission  will  "  elevate  the  German  name  to  that  of 
the  most  glorious  among  all  the  peoples,  making 
this  Nation  the  regenerator,  and  restorer  of  the 
world."  He  personifies  their  ancestors  speaking 
to  them,  and  saying :  "  We  in  our  time 
saved  Germany  from  the  Roman  World  Empire." 
But  "  yours  is  the  greater  fortune.  You 
may  establish  once  for  all  the  Kingdom  of 
the  Spirit  and  of  Reason,  bringing  to  naught 
corporeal  might  as  the  ruling  thing  in  the  world." 
And  this  antithesis  of  the  Germanic  and  the 
Roman  principles  has  become  a  commonplace  in 
the  German  imagination.  Moreover,  for  Germany 
to  win  is  no  selfish  gain.  It  is  an  advantage  to  all 
nations.  "  The  great  promise  of  a  kingdom  of 
right  reason  and  truth  on  earth  must  not  become  a 
vain  and  empty  phantom ;  the  present  iron  age  is 
but  a  transition  to  a  better  estate."  Hence  the 
concluding  words :  "  There  is  no  middle  road :  If 
you  sink,  so  sinks  humanity  entire  with  you,  with- 
out hope  of  future  restoration." 

The  premises  of  the  historic  syllogism  are  plain. 
First,  the  German  Luther  who  saved  for  mankind 


88      MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

the  principle  of  spiritual  freedom  against  Latin 
externalism ;  then  Kant  and  Fichte,  who  wrought 
out  the  principle  into  a  final  philosophy  of  science, 
morals  and  the  State;  as  conclusion,  the  German 
nation  organized  in  order  to  win  the  world  to  rec- 
ognition of  the  principle,  and  thereby  to  establish 
the  rule  of  freedom  and  science  in  humanity  as  a 
whole.  The  Germans  are  patient;  they  have  a 
long  memory.  Ideas  produced  when  Germany  was 
divided  and  broken  were  retained  and  cherished 
after  it  became  a  unified  State  of  supreme  military 
power,  and  one  yielding  to  no  other  people  in 
industrial  and  commercial  prosperity.  In  the 
grosser  sense  of  the  words,  Germany  has  not  held 
that  might  makes  right.  But  it  has  been  in- 
structed by  a  long  line  of  philosophers  that  it  is 
the  business  of  ideal  right  to  gather  might  to  itself 
in  order  that  it  may  cease  to  be  merely  ideal.  The 
State  represents  exactly  this  incarnation  of  ideal 
law  and  right  in  effective  might.  The  military 
arm  is  part  of  this  moral  embodiment.  Let  senti- 
mentalists sing  the  praises  of  an  ideal  to  which 
no  actual  force  corresponds.  Prussian  faith  in 
the  reality  and  enforcement  among  men  of  the 
ideal  is  of  a  more  solid  character.    As  past  history 


MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY      89 

is  the  record  of  the  gradual  realization  in  the  Ger- 
manic State  of  the  divine  idea,  future  history 
must  uphold  and  expand  what  has  been  accom- 
plished. Diplomacy  is  the  veiled  display  of  law 
clothed  with  force  in  behalf  of  this  realization, 
and  war  is  its  overt  manifestation.  That  war 
demands  self-sacrifice  is  but  the  more  convincing 
proof  of  its  profound  morality.  It  is  the  final 
seal  of  devotion  to  the  extension  of  the  kingdom  of 
the  Absolute  on  earth. 

For  the  philosophy  stands  or  falls  with  the  con- 
ception of  an  Absolute.  Whether  a  philosophy 
of  absolutes  is  theoretically  sound  or  unsound  is 
none  of  my  present  concern.  But  that  philosoph- 
ical absolutism  may  be  practically  as  dangerous  as 
matter  of  fact  political  absolutism  history  testi- 
fies. The  situation  puts  in  relief  what  finally  is 
at  issue  between  a  theory  which  is  pinned  to  a 
belief  in  an  Absolute  beyond  history  and  behind 
experience,  and  one  which  is  frankly  experimental. 
For  any  philosophy  which  is  not  consistently  ex- 
perimental will  always  traffic  in  absolutes  no 
matter  in  how  disguised  a  form.  In  German  po- 
litical philosophy,  the  traffic  is  without  mask. 


m 


THE  GERMANIC  PHILOSOPHY  OF 
HISTORY 

The  unity  of  the  German  people  longed  for  and 
dreamed  of  after  1807  became  an  established  fact 
through  the  war  of  1870  with  France.  It  is  easy 
to  assign  symbolic  significance  to  this  fact.  Ever 
since  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution — if  not  be- 
fore— German  thought  has  taken  shape  in  conflict 
with  ideas  that  were  characteristically  French  and 
in  sharp  and  conscious  antithesis  to  them.  Rous- 
seau's deification  of  Nature  was  the  occasion  for 
the  development  of  the  conception  of  Culture. 
His  condemnation  of  science  and  art  as  socially 
corrupting  and  socially  divisive  worked  across  the 
Rhine  to  produce  the  notion  that  science  and 
art  are  the  forces  which  moralize  and  unify  hu- 
manity. The  cosmopolitanism  of  the  French  En- 
lightenment was  transformed  by  German  thinkers 
into  a  self-conscious  assertion  of  nationalism. 
The  abstract  Rights  of  Man  of  the  French  Revo- 
91 


92  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

lution  were  set  in  antithesis  to  the  principle  of 
the  rights  of  the  citizen  secured  to  him  solely  by 
the  power  of  the  politically  organized  nation.  The 
deliberate  breach  of  the  revolutionary  philosophy 
with  the  past,  the  attempt  (foreshadowed  in  the 
philosophy  of  Descartes)  to  make  a  tabula  rasa 
of  the  fortuitous  assemblage  of  traditions  and 
institutions  which  history  offers,  in  order  to  sub- 
stitute a  social  structure  built  upon  Reason,  was 
envisaged  as  the  fons  et  origo  of  all  evil.  That 
history  is  itself  incarnate  reason;  that  history  is 
infinitely  more  rational  than  the  formal  abstract- 
ing and  generalizing  reason  of  individuals;  that 
individual  mind  becomes  rational  only  through  the 
absorption  and  assimilation  of  the  universal  rea- 
son embodied  in  historic  institutions  and  historic 
development,  became  the  articles  of  faith  of  the 
German  intellectual  creed.  It  is  hardly  an  exag- 
geration to  say  that  for  almost  a  century  the 
characteristic  philosophy  of  Germany  has  been  a 
philosophy  of  history  even  when  not  such  in  ap- 
parent form. 

Yet  the  meaning  of  this  appeal  to  history  is  lost 
unless  we  bear  in  mind  that  the  Enlightenment 
after  all  transmitted  to  Germany,  from  medieval 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  93 

thought,  its  foundation  principle.  The  appeal  was 
not  from  reason  to  experience,  but  from  analytic 
thought  (henceforth  condemned  to  be  merely  "  Un- 
derstanding " — "  Verstand")  to  an  absolute  and 
universal  Reason  (Vernunft)  partially  revealed  in 
nature  and  more  adequately  manifested  in  human 
history  as  an  organic  process.  Recourse  to  his- 
tory was  required  because  not  of  any  empirical 
lessons  it  has  to  teach,  nor  yet  because  history  be- 
queathes to  us  stubborn  institutions  which  must 
be  reckoned  with,  but  because  history  is  the 
dynamic  and  evolving  realization  of  immanent 
reason.  The  contrast  of  the  German  attitude  with 
that  of  Edmund  Burke  is  instructive.  The  latter 
had  the  same  profound  hostility  to  cutting  loose 
from  the  past.  But  his  objection  was  not  that 
the  past  is  an  embodiment  of  transcendent  reason, 
but  that  its  institutions  are  an  "  inheritance  "  be- 
queathed to  us  from  the  "  collected  wisdom  "  of 
our  forefathers.  The  continuity  of  political  life 
centers  not  about  an  inner  evolving  Idea,  but 
about  "  our  hearths,  our  sepulchers  and  our  al- 
tars." He  has  the  same  suspicion  of  abstract 
rights  of  man.  But  his  appeal  is  to  experience 
and  to  practical  consequences.     Since  "  circum- 


94  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

stances  give  in  reality  to  every  principle  its  dis- 
tinguishing color  and  discriminating  effect,"  there 
is  no  soundness  in  any  principle  when  "  it  stands 
stripped  of  every  relation  in  all  the  nakedness  and 
solitude  of  metaphysical  abstraction." 

According  to  the  German  view,  the  English  pro- 
tested because  of  interference  with  empirically 
established  rights  and  privileges;  the  Germans, 
because  they  perceived  in  the  Revolution  a  radical 
error  as  to  the  nature  and  work  of  reason.  In 
point  of  fact,  the  Germans  never  made  that  break 
with  tradition,  political  or  religious,  of  which  the 
French  Revolution  is  an  emphatic  symbol.  I  have 
already  referred  to  Kant's  disposition  to  regard 
church  dogmas  (of  which,  as  dogmas,  he  disap- 
proved) as  vehicles  of  eternal  spiritual  truths — 
husks  to  preserve  an  inner  grain.  All  of  the 
great  German  idealists  gave  further  expression  to 
this  disposition.  To  Hegel,  for  example,  the  sub- 
stance of  the  doctrines  of  Protestant  Christianity 
is  identical  with  the  truths  of  absolute  philosophy, 
except  that  in  religion  they  are  expressed  in  a 
form  not  adequate  to  their  meaning,  the  form, 
namely,  of  imaginative  thought  in  which  most  men 
live.    The  disposition  to  philosophize  Christianity 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  95 

is  too  widely  shown  in  Germany  to  be  dismissed 
as  a  cowardly  desire  at  accommodation  with  things 
established.  It  shows  rather  an  intellectual  piety 
among  a  people  where  freedom  of  thought  and 
conscience  had  been  achieved  without  a  violent 
political  upheaval.  Hegel  finds  that  the  char- 
acteristic weakness  of  Romance  thought  was  an 
inner  split,  an  inability  to  reconcile  the  spiritual 
and  absolute  essence  of  reality  with  which  religion 
deals  with  the  detailed  work  of  intelligence  in 
science  and  politics.  The  Germans,  on  the  con- 
trary, "  were  predestined  to  be  the  bearers  of  the 
Christian  principle  and  to  carry  out  the  Idea  as 
the  absolutely  Rational  end."  They  accomplished 
this,  not  by  a  flight  away  from  the  secular  world, 
but  by  realizing  that  the  Christian  principle  is 
in  itself  that  of  the  unity  of  the  subjective  and 
the  objective,  the  spiritual  and  the  worldly.  The 
"  spirit  finds  the  goal  of  its  struggle,  its  harmony, 
in  that  very  sphere  which  it  made  the  object  of  its 
resistance, — it  finds  that  secular  pursuits  are  a 
spiritual  occupation  " ; — a  discovery,  surely,  which 
unites  simplicity  with  comprehensiveness  and  one 
which  does  not  lead  to  criticism  of  the  secular  pur- 
suits carried  on.     Whatever  is  to  be  said  of  this 


96  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

as  philosophy,  it  expresses,  in  a  way,  the  quality 
of  German  life  and  thought.  More  than  other 
countries,  Germany  has  had  the  fortune  to  pre- 
serve as  food  for  its  imaginative  life  and  as  emo- 
tional sanction  the  great  ideas  of  the  past.  It 
has  carried  over  their  reinforcement  into  the  pur- 
suit of  science  and  into  politics — into  the  very 
things  which  in  other  countries,  notably  in  the 
Latin  countries,  have  been  used  as  weapons  of 
attack  upon  tradition. 

Political  development  tells  a  somewhat  similar 
tale.  The  painful  transition  from  feudalism  to 
the  modern  era  was,  for  the  most  part,  accom- 
plished recently  in  Germany,  and  accomplished 
under  the  guidance  of  established  political  au- 
thorities instead  of  by  revolt  against  them. 
Under  their  supervision,  and  mainly  at  their  ini- 
tiative, Germany  has  passed  in  less  than  a  century 
to  the  regime  of  modern  capitalistic  competitive 
enterprise,  moderated  by  the  State,  out  of  the  do- 
minion of  those  local  and  guild  restrictions  which 
so  long  held  economic  activity  in  corporate  bonds. 
The  governing  powers  themselves  secured  to 
members  of  the  State  what  seems,  at  least 
to  Germans,  to   be  a   satisfying  degree  of  po- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  97 

litical  freedom.  Along  with  this  absence  of  internal 
disturbance  and  revolution,  we  must  put  the  fact 
that  every  step  in  the  development  of  Germany 
as  a  unified  political  power  has  been  effected  by 
war  with  some  of  the  neighbors  by  which  it  is 
hemmed  in.  There  stands  the  unfolding  sequence : 
1815  (not  to  go  back  to  Frederick  the  Great), 
1864, 1866, 1870.  And  the  significant  thing  about 
these  wars  is  not  that  external  territory  was 
annexed  as  their  consequence,  but  the  rebound 
of  external  struggle  upon  the  achieving  of  in- 
ternal unity.  No  wonder  the  German  imagination 
has  been  impressed  with  the  idea  of  an  organic 
evolution  from  within,  which  takes  the  form  of  a 
unity  achieved  through  conflict  and  the  conquest 
of  an  opposing  principle. 

Such  scattering  comments  as  these  prove  noth- 
ing. But  they  suggest  why  German  thought  has 
been  peculiarly  sensitive  to  the  idea  of  historic 
continuity;  why  it  has  been  prone  to  seek  for 
an  original  implicit  essence  which  has  progressively 
unfolded  itself  in  a  single  development.  It  would 
take  much  more  than  an  hour  to  give  even  a  super- 
ficial account  of  the  growth  of  the  historical  sci- 
ences  and  historic  methods  of  Germany   during 


98  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  would 
involve  an  account  of  the  creation  of  philology, 
and  the  philological  methods  which  go  by  the 
name  of  higher  criticism;  of  their  extension  to 
archeology;  of  the  historic  schools  of  jurispru- 
dence and  political  economy,  as  well  as  of  the 
ways  in  which  such  men  as  Niebuhr,  Mommsen 
and  Ranke  remade  the  methods  of  studying  the 
past.  I  can  only  say  here  that  Germany  devel- 
oped such  an  effective  historical  technique  that 
even  mediocre  men  achieved  respectable  results; 
and,  much  more  significantly,  that  when  Taine 
made  the  remark  (quoted  earlier)  that  we  owe  to 
the  Germany  of  the  half  century  before  1830  all 
our  distinctively  modern  ideas,  his  remarks  apply 
above  all  to  the  disciplines  concerned  with  the  his- 
torical development  of  mankind. 

The  bases  of  this  philosophy  are  already  before 
us.  Even  in  Kant  we  find  the  idea  of  a  single 
continuous  development  of  humanity,  as  a  progress 
from  a  reign  of  natural  instinct  to  a  final  freedom 
won  through  adherence  to  the  law  of  reason. 
Fichte  sketched  the  stages  already  traversed  on 
this  road  and  located  the  point  at  which  mankind 
now  stands.    In  his  later  writings,  the  significance 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  99 

of  history  as  the  realization  of  the  absolute  pur- 
pose is  increasingly  emphasized.  History  is  the 
continuous  life  of  a  divine  Ego  by  which  it  realizes 
in  fact  what  it  is  in  idea  or  destiny.  Its  phases 
are  successive  stages  in  the  founding  of  the  King- 
dom of  God  on  earth.  It  and  it  only  is  the  revela- 
tion of  the  Absolute.  Along  with  this  growing 
deification  of  history  is  the  increased  significance 
attached  to  nationalism  in  general  and  the  Ger- 
man nation  in  particular.  The  State  is  the  con- 
crete individual  interposed  between  generic  hu- 
manity and  particular  beings.  In  his  words,  the 
national  folk  is  the  channel  of  divine  life  as  it 
pours  into  particular  finite  human  beings.  He 
says: 

"  While  cosmopolitanism  is  the  dominant  will 
that  the  purpose  of  the  existence  of  humanity 
be  actually  realized  in  humanity,  patriotism  is 
the  will  that  this  end  be  first  realized  in  the  par- 
ticular nation  to  which  we  ourselves  belong,  and 
that  this  achievement  thence  spread  over  the  entire 


Since  the  State  is  an  organ  of  divinity,  patri- 
otism   is    religion.     As    the    Germans    are    the 


100  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

only  truly  religious  people,  they  alone  are  truly 
capable  of  patriotism.  Other  peoples  are  products 
of  external  causes ;  they  have  no  self-formed  Self, 
but  only  an  acquired  self  due  to  general  conven- 
tion. In  Germany  there  is  a  self  which  is  self- 
wrought  and  self-owned.  The  very  fact  that  Ger- 
many for  centuries  has  had  no  external  unity 
proves  that  its  selfhood  is  metaphysical,  not  a 
gift  of  circumstance.  This  conception  of  the 
German  mission  has  been  combined  with  a  kind 
of  anthropological  metaphysics  which  has  become 
the  rage  in  Germany.  The  Germans  alone  of  all 
existing  European  nations  are  a  pure  race.  They 
alone  have  preserved  unalloyed  the  original  divine 
deposit.  Language  is  the  expression  of  the  na- 
tional soul,  and  only  the  Germans  have  kept  their 
native  speech  in  its  purity.  In  like  vein,  Hegel 
attributes  the  inner  disharmony  characteristic  of 
Romance  peoples  to  the  fact  that  they  are  of 
mixed  Germanic  and  Latin  blood.  A  purely  arti- 
ficial cult  of  race  has  so  flourished  in  Germany 
that  many  social  movements — like  anti-Semitism 
— and  some  of  Germany's  political  ambitions  can- 
not be  understood  apart  from  the  mystic  identi- 
fication of  Race,  Culture  and  the  State.     In  the 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  101 

light  of  actual  science,  this  is  so  mythological  that 
the  remark  of  an  American  periodical  that  race 
means  a  number  of  people  reading  the  same 
newspapers  is  sober  scientific  fact  compared 
with  it.* 

At  the  beginning  of  history  Fichte  placed  an 
"  Urvolk."  His  account  of  it  seems  an  attempt 
to  rationalize  at  one  stroke  the  legends  of  the 
Golden  Age,  the  Biblical  account  of  man  before 
the  Fall  and  Rousseau's  primitive  "  state  of  na- 
ture." The  Urvolk  lived  in  a  paradise  of  inno- 
cence, a  paradise  without  knowledge,  labor  or  art. 

*  Chamberlain,  for  example,  holds  that  Jesus  must  have 
been  of  Teutonic  birth — a  perfect  logical  conclusion  from 
the  received  philosophy  of  the  State  and  religion.  Quite 
aware  that  there  is  much  Slav  blood  in  northern  Germany 
and  Romance  blood  in  southern  Germany,  he  explains  that 
while  with  other  peoples  crossing  produces  a  mongrel  race, 
the  potency  of  the  German  blood  is  such  that  cross-breeding 
strengthens  it.  While  at  one  time  he  explains  the  historic 
strength  of  the  Jew  on  the  ground  that  he  has  kept  his 
race  pure,  another  place  he  allows  his  indignation  at  the 
Jews  to  lead  him  to  include  them  among  the  most  mongrel 
of  all  peoples.  To  one  thing  he  remains  consistent:  By  the 
very  essence  of  race,  the  Semites  represent  a  metaphysical 
principle  inherently  hostile  to  the  grand  Germanic  principle. 
It  p«rhaps  seems  absurd  to  dignify  the  vagaries  of  this 
garrulous  writer,  but  according  to  all  report  the  volumes 
in  which  such  expressions  occur,  "The  Foundations  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,"  has  had  august  approval  and  much 
vogue. 


102  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

The  philosophy  which  demands  such  a  Folk  is  com- 
paratively simple.  Except  as  a  manifestation  of 
Absolute  Reason,  humanity  could  not  exist  at  all. 
Yet  in  the  first  stage  of  the  manifestation,  Reason 
could  not  have  been  appropriated  by  the  self- 
conscious  effort  of  man.  It  existed  without  con- 
sciousness of  itself,  for  it  was  given,  not,  like  all 
true  self-consciousness,  won  by  morally  creative 
struggle.  Rational  in  substance,  in  form  it  was 
but  feeling  or  instinct.  In  a  sense,  all  subsequent 
history  is  but  a  return  to  this  primitive  condition. 
But  "  humanity  must  make  the  journey  on  its  own 
feet ;  by  its  own  strength  it  must  bring  itself  back 
to  that  state  in  which  it  was  once  without  its  own 
cooperating  labor.  .  .  .  If  humanity  does  not  re- 
create its  own  true  being,  it  has  no  real  life." 

'While  philosophy  compels  us  to  assume  a  Normal 
People  who,  by  "  the  mere  fact  of  their  existence, 
without  science  and  art,  found  themselves  in  a 
state  of  perfectly  developed  reason,"  there  is  no 
ground  for  not  admitting  the  existence  at  the  same 

\  time  of  "  timid  and  rude  earth-born  savages." 
Thus  the  original  state  of  humanity  would  have 
been  one  of  the  greatest  possible  inequality,  being 
divided  between  the  Normal  Folk  existing  as  a 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  103 

manifestation  of  Reason  and  the  wild  and  savage 
races  of  barbarism. 

In  his  later  period  of  inflamed  patriotism  this 
innocuous  speculation  grew  a  sting.  He  had  de- 
termined that  the  present  age — the  Europe  of  the 
Enlightenment  and  the  French  Revolution — is  the 
age  of  liberation  from  the  external  authority  in 
which  Reason  had  presented  itself  in  the  second 
age.  Hence  it  is  inherently  negative :  "  an  age  of 
absolute  indifference  toward  the  Truth,  an  age 
of  entire  and  unrestrained  licentiousness."  But 
the  further  evolution  of  the  Divine  Idea  demands 
a  Folk  which  has  retained  the  primitive  principle 
of  Reason,  which  may  redeem,  therefore,  the 
corrupt  and  rebellious  modes  of  humanity  else- 
where existing.  Since  the  Germans  are  this 
saving  remnant,  they  are  the  Urvolk,  the  Nor- 
mal Nation,  of  the  modern  period.  From  this 
point  on,  idealization  of  past  Germanic 
history  and  appeal  to  the  nation  to  realize 
its  unique  calling  by  victory  over  Napoleon 
blend. 

The  Fichtean  scaffolding  tumbled,  but  these 
ideas  persisted.  I  doubt  if  it  is  possible  to  exag- 
gerate the  extent  to  which  German  history  has 


104  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

been  systematically  idealized  for  the  last  hundred 
years.  Technically  speaking,  the  Romantic  move- 
ment may  have  passed  away  and  an  age  of  scien- 
tific history  dawned.  Actually  the  detailed  facts 
have  been  depicted  by  use  of  the  palette  of  Ro- 
manticism. Space  permits  but  one  illustration 
which  would  be  but  a  literary  curiosity  were  it 
not  fairly  typical.  Tacitus  called  his  account  of 
the  northern  barbarians  Germania — an  unfortu- 
nate title  in  view  of  later  developments.  The 
characteristics  assigned  by  him  to  the  German 
tribes  are  such  as  any  anthropologist  could  dupli- 
cate from  any  warlike  barbaric  tribe.  Yet  over 
and  over  again  these  traits  (which  Tacitus  ideal- 
ized as  Cooper,  say,  idealized  the  North  American 
Indian  traits)  are  made  the  basis  of  the  philo- 
sophic history  of  the  German  people.  The  Ger- 
mans, for  example,  had  that  psychological  ex- 
perience now  known  as  mana,  manitou,  tabu,  etc. 
They  identified  their  gods,  in  Tacitus'  phrase, 
with  "  that  mystery  which  they  perceive  by  ex- 
periencing sacred  fear."  This  turns  out  to  be 
the  germinal  deposit  of  spiritual-mindedness  which 
later  showed  itself  in  Luther  and  in  the  peculiar 
genius  of  the  Germans   for  religious  experience. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  105 

The  following  words  are  from  no  less  an  author- 
ity than  Pfleiderer: 

"  Cannot  we  recognize  in  this  point  that  truly 
German  characteristic  of  Iimerlichkeit  which 
scorns  to  fix  for  sensuous  perception  the  divine 
something  which  makes  itself  felt  in  the  depths  of 
the  sensitive  soul,  which  scorns  to  drag  down  the 
sublime  mystery  of  the  unknowable  to  the  vulgar 
distinctness  of  earthly  things?  The  fact  that  the 
Germans  attached  but  little  importance  to  reli- 
gious ceremonies  accords  with  this  view." 

To  others,  this  sense  of  mystery  is  a  prophetic 
anticipation  of  the  Kantian  thing-in-itself. 

A  similar  treatment  has  been  accorded  to  the 
personal  and  voluntary  bond  by  which  individuals 
attached  themselves  to  a  chieftain.  Thus  early 
was  marked  out  the  fidelity  or  loyalty,  Treue, 
which  is  uniquely  Germanic — although  some  war- 
like tribes  among  our  Indians  carried  the  system 
still  further.  I  can  allow  myself  but  one  more 
example  of  the  way  in  which  the  philosophic  so- 
phistication of  history  has  worked.  No  historian 
can  be  unconscious  of  the  extent  to  which  Eu-  \ 
ropean  culture  has  been  genuinely  European — I 
the  extent  to  which  it  derives  itself  from  a  common 


106  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

heritage  of  the  ancient  world  and  the  extent  to 
which  intermixtures  and  borrowings  of  culture 
have  gone  on  ever  since.  As  to  Germany,  how- 
ever, these  obvious  facts  have  to  be  accommodated 
to  the  doctrine  of  an  original  racial  deposit  stead- 
ily evolving  from  within. 

4 The  method  is  simple.  As  respects  Germany, 
ese  cultural  borrowings  and  crosses  represent 
the  intrinsic  universality  of  its  genius.  Through 
this  universality,  the  German  spirit  finds  itself 
at  home  everywhere.  Consequently,  it  consciously 
appropriates  and  assimilates  what  other  peoples 
have  produced  by  a  kind  of  blind  unconscious  in- 
stinct. Thus  it  was  German  thought  which  re- 
vealed the  truth  of  Hellenic  culture,  and  rescued 
essential  Christianity  from  its  Romanized  petri- 
faction. The  principle  of  Reason  which  French 
enlightenment  laid  hold  of  only  in  its  negative  and 
destructive  aspect,  the  German  spirit  grasped  in 
its  positive  and  constructive  form.  Shakespeare 
happened  to  be  born  in  England,  but  only  the 
Germans  have  apprehended  him  in  his  spiritual 
universality  so  that  he  is  now  more  his  own  than 
he  is  England's — and  so  on.  But  with  respect  to 
other  peoples,  similar  borrowings  reveal  only  their 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  107 

lack  of  inner  and  essential  selfhood.  While  Luther 
is  universal  because  he  is  German,  Shakespeare  is 
universal  because  he  is  not  English. 

I  have  intimated  that  Fichte's  actual  influence 
was  limited.  But  his  basic  ideas  of  the  State  and 
of  history  were  absorbed  in  the  philosophy  of 
Hegel,  and  Hegel  for  a  considerable  period  abso- 
lutely dominated  German  thinking.  To  set  forth 
the  ground  principles  of  his  "  absolute  idealism  " 
would  be  only  to  repeat  what  has  already  been 
said.  Its  chief  difference,  aside  from  Hegel's  en- 
cyclopedic knowledge,  his  greater  concrete  his- 
toric interest  and  his  more  conservative  tempera- 
ment, is  his  bottomless  scorn  for  an  Idea,  an  Ab- 
solute, which  merely  ought  to  be  and  which  is  only 
going  to  be  realized  after  a  period  of  time.  "  The 
Actual  it  the  Rational  and  the  Rational  t*  the 
Actual " — and  the  actual  means  the  actuating 
force  and  movement  of  things.  It  is  customary  to 
call  him  an  Idealist.  In  one  sense  of  much  abused 
terms,  he  is  the  greatest  reaUst  known  to  phi- 
losophy. He  might  be  called  a  Brutalist.  In  the 
inquiry  Bourdon  carried  on  in  Germany  a  few 
years  ago  (published  under  the  title  of  the  "  Ger- 
man Enigma  "),  he  records  a  conversation  with  a 


108  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

German  who  deplores  the  tendency  of  the  Germans 
to  forsake  the  solid  bone  of  things  in  behalf  of 
a  romantic  shadow.  As  against  this  he  appeals 
to  the  realistic  sense  of  Hegel,  who,  "  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  idealism  which  had  lifted  Germany  on 
wings,  arrayed  and  marshaled  the  maxims  of  an 
unflinching  realism.  He  had  formulas  for  the  justi- 
fication of  facts  whatever  they  might  be.  That 
which  is,  he  would  say,  is  reason  realized.  And 
what  did  he  teach?  That  the  hour  has  sounded 
for  the  third  act  in  the  drama  of  humanity,  and 
that  the  German  opportunity  is  not  far  off.  ... 
I  could  show  you  throughout  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury the  torrent  of  political  and  social  ideas  which 
had  their  source  here." 

I  have  said  that  the  essential  points  of  the 
Fichtean  philosophy  of  history  were  taken  up  into 
the  Hegelian  system.  This  assimilation  involved, 
however,  a  rectification  of  an  inconsistency  be- 
tween the  earlier  and  the  later  moral  theories  of 
Fichte.  In  his  earlier  ethical  writings,  em- 
phasis fell  upon  conscious  moral  personality — 
upon  the  deliberate  identification  by  the  individual 
will  of  its  career  and  destiny  with  the  purpose  of 
the  Absolute.     In  his  later  patriotic  philosophy, 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  109 

1  he  asserts  that  the  organized  nation  is  the  channel 
by  which  a  finite  ego  acquires  moral  personality, 
since  the  nation  alone  transmits  to  individuals  the 
generic  principle  of  God  working  in  humanity.  At 
the  same  time  he  appeals  to  the  resolute  will  and 
consciously  chosen  self-sacrifice  of  individuals  to 
overthrow  the  enemy  and  re-establish  the  Prussian 
state.  When  Hegel  writes  that  victory  has  been 
obtained,  the  war  of  Independence  has  been  suc- 
cessfully waged.  The  necessity  of  emphasizing 
individual  self-assertion  had  given  way  to  the  need 
of  subordinating  the  individual  to  the  established 
state  in  order  to  check  the  disintegrating  tend- 
encies of  liberalism. 

Haym  has  said  that  Hegel's  "  Philosophy  of 
Law  "  had  for  its  task  the  exhibition  as  the  per- 
fect work  of  Absolute  Reason  up  to  date  of  the 
"  practical  and  political  condition  existing  in 
Prussia  in  1821."  This  was  meant  as  a  hostile 
attack.  But  Hegel  himself  should  have  been  the 
last  to  object.  With  his  scorn  for  an  Ideal  so 
impotent  that  its  realization  must  depend  upon 
the  effort  of  private  selves,  an  Absolute  so  incon- 
sequential that  it  must  wait  upon  the  accidents  of 
future  time  for  manifestation,  he  sticks  in  politics 


110  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

more  than  elsewhere  to  the  conviction  that  the 
actual  If  the  rational.  "  The  task  of  philosophy 
is  to  comprehend  that  which  is,  for  that  which  is, 
is  Reason."  Alleged  philosophies  which  try  to 
tell  what  the  State  should  be  or  even  what  a  state 
ought  in  the  future  to  come  to  be,  are  idle  fan- 
tasies. Such  attempts  come  too  late.  Human 
wisdom  is  like  the  bird  of  Minerva  which  takes  its 
flight  only  at  the  close  of  day."  *  It  comes,  after 
the  issue,  to  acknowledge  what  has  happened. 
"  The  State  is  the  rational  in  itself  and  for  itself. 
Its  substantial  unity  is  an  absolute  end  in  itself. 
To  it  belongs  supreme  right  in  respect  to  individ- 
uals whose  first  duty  is — just  to  be  members  of 
the  State."  .  .  .  The  State  "  is  the  absolute  real- 
ity and  the  individual  himself  has  objective  exist- 
ence, truth  and  morality  only  in  his  capacity  as 
a  member  oi;  the  State."  It  is  a  commonplace  of 
idealistic  theism  that  nature  is  a  manifestation  of 
God.  But  Hegel  says  that  nature  is  only  an  ex- 
ternalized, unconscious  and  so  incomplete  expres- 
sion.   The  State  has  more,  not  less,  objective  real- 

*Marx  said  of  the  historic  schools  of  politics,  law  and 
economics  that  to  them,  as  Jehovah  to  Moses  on  Mt.  Sinai, 
the  divine  showed  but  its  posterior  side. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  111 

ity  than  physical  nature,  for  it  is  a  realization  of 
Absolute  spirit  in  the  realm  of  consciousness.  The 
doctrine  presents  an  extreme  form  of  the  idea,  not 
of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  but  of  the  divine  right 
of  States.  "  The  march  of  God  in  history  is  the 
cause  of  the  existence  of  states;  their  foundation 
is  the  power  of  reason  realizing  itself  as  will. 
Every  state,  whatever  it  be,  participates  in  the 
divine  essence.  The  State  is  not  the  work  of 
human  art;  only  Reason  could  produce  it."  The 
State  is  God  on  earth. 

*  His  depreciation  of  the  individual  as  an  indi- 
vidual appears  in  every  theme  of  his  Philosophy 
of  Right  and  History.  At  first  sight,  his  theory 
of  great  world  heroes  seems  inconsistent  with  his 
disregard  of  individuals.  While  the  morality  of 
most  men  consists  simply  in  assimilating  into  their 
own  habits  the  customs  already  found  in  the  insti- 
tutions about  them,  great  men  initiate  new  his- 
toric epochs.  They  derive  "  their  purposes  and 
their  calling  not  from  the  calm  regular  course  of 
things  sanctioned  by  the  existing  order,  but  from 
a  concealed  fount,  from  that  inner  spirit  hidden 
beneath  the  surface,  which,  striking  the  outer 
world  as  a  shell,  bursts  it  to  pieces."    The  heroes 


112  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

are  thus  the  exception  which  proves  the  rule.  They 
are  world  characters ;  while  they  seem  to  be  seek- 
ing personal  interests  they  are  really  acting  as 
organs  of  a  universal  will,  of  God  in  his  further 
march.  In  his  identification  with  the  Absolute, 
the  world-hero  can  have  but  one  aim  to  which  "  he 
is  devoted  regardless  of  all  else.  Such  men  may 
even  treat  other  great  and  sacred  interests  incon- 
siderately. .  .  .  But  so  mighty  a  form  must  tram- 
ple down  many  an  innocent  flower — crush  to  pieces 
many  an  object  in  its  path."  We  are  not  sur- 
prised to  see  that  Alexander,  Caesar  and  Napoleon 
are  the  characters  he  prefers  to  cite.  One  can  only 
regret  that  he  died  before  his  contemplative  piety 
could  behold  Bismarck. 

A  large  part  of  the  intellectual  machinery  by 
which  Hegel  overcame  the  remnants  of  individ- 
ualism found  in  prior  philosophy  came  from  the 
idea  of  organic  development  which  had  been  active 
in  German  thought  since  the  time  of  Herder.  In 
his  chief  work  ("  Ideas  for  a  Philosophy  of  the 
History  of  Humanity "),  written  in  the  closing 
decades  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Herder  holds 
that  history  is  a  progressive  education  of  human- 
ity.    This  idea,  had  from  Lessing,  is  combined 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  113 

with  the  idea  of  Leibniz  that  change  is  evolution, 
by  means  of  an  internal  force,  of  powers  originally 
implicit  in  existence,  and  with  the  idea  of  Spinoza 
of  an  all-comprehensive  substance.  This  idea  of 
organic  growth  was  then  applied  to  language, 
literature  and  institutions.  It  soon  obtained  rein- 
forcement from  the  rising  science  of  biology. 
Long  before  the  days  of  Darwin  or  Spencer,  the 
idea  of  evolution  had  been  a  commonplace  of  Ger- 
man thought  with  respect  to  everything  concern- 
ing the  history  of  humanity.  The  notion  was 
set  in  sharp  antithesis  to  the  conception  of  "  mak- 
ing" or  manufacturing  institutions  and  constitu- 
tions, which  was  treated  as  one  of  the  fallacies  of 
the  French  philosophy  of  the  Enlightenment.  A 
combination  of  this  notion  of  universal  organic 
growth  with  the  technique  of  prior  idealism  may 
fairly  be  said  to  have  determined  Hegel's  whole 
philosophy.  While  Leibniz  and  Herder  had  em- 
phasized the  notion  of  harmony  as  an  essential 
factor  of  the  working  of  organic  forces,  Hegel 
took  from  Fichte  the  notion  of  a  unity  or  syn- 
thesis arrived  at  by  "  positing,"  and  overcoming 
an  opposite.  Struggle  for  existence  (or  realiza- 
tion) was  thus  an  "organic"  part  of  German 


114  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

thinking  long  before  the  teaching  of  Darwin,  who, 
in  fact,  is  usually  treated  by  German  writers  as 
giving  a  rather  superficial  empirical  expression 
to  an  idea  which  they  had  already  grasped  in  its 
universal  speculative  form.  It  is  characteristic  of 
the  extent  in  which  Hegel  thought  in  terms  of 
struggle  and  overcoming  that  after  stating  why 
it  was  as  yet  impossible  to  include  the  Americas 
in  his  philosophy  of  history,  and  after  saying 
that  in  the  future  the  burden  of  world  history  will 
reveal  itself  there,  he  surmises  that  it  may  take  the 
form  of  a  "  contest  "  between  North  and  South 
America.  No  philosopher  has  ever  thought  so 
consistently  and  so  wholly  in  terms  of  strife  and 
overcoming  as  Hegel.  When  he  says  the  "  world 
history  is  the  world  judgment "  he  means  judg- 
ment in  the  sense  of  assize,  and  judgment  as 
victory  of  one  and  defeat  of  another — victory 
being  the  final  proof  that  the  world  spirit  has  now 
passed  from  one  nation  to  take  up  its  residence  in 
another.  To  be  defeated  in  a  way  which  causes 
the  nation  to  take  a  secondary  position  among 
nations  is  a  sign  that  divine  judgment  has  been 
passed  upon  it.  When  a  recent  German  writer 
argues  that  for  Germany  to  surrender  any  terri- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  115 

tory  which  it  has  conquered  during  the  present 
war  would  be  sacrilegious,  since  it  would  be  to 
refuse  to  acknowledge  the  workings  of  God  in 
human  history,  he  speaks  quite  in  the  Hegelian 
vein. 

Although  the  phenomenon  of  nationalism  was 
very  recent  when  Hegel  wrote,  indeed  practically 
contemporary  with  his  own  day,  he  writes  in  na- 
tionalistic terms  the  entire  history  of  humanity. 
The  State  is  the  Individual  of  history ;  it  is  to  his- 
tory what  a  given  man  is  to  biography.  History 
gives  us  the  progressive  realization  or  evolution  of 
the  Absolute,  moving  from  one  National  Individual 
to  another.  It  is  law,  the  universal,  which  makes 
the  State  a  State,  for  law  is  reason,  not  as  mere 
subjective  reflection,  but  in  its  manifestation  as 
supreme  over  and  in  particulars.  On  this  account, 
Hegel's  statement  that  the  fundamental  principle 
of  history  is  the  progressive  realization  of  free- 
dom does  not  mean  what  an  uninstructed  English 
reader  would  naturally  take  it  to  mean.  Freedom 
is  always  understood  in  terms  of  Reason.  Its  ex- 
pression in  history  means  that  Thought  has  pro- 
gressively become  conscious  of  itself;  that  is,  has 
made  itself  its  own  object.     Freedom  is  the  conr 


116  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

sciousness  of  freedom.  Liberty  of  action  has  little 
to  do  with  it.  Obviously  it  is  only  in  the  German 
idealistic  system — particularly  in  the  system  of 
Hegel  himself — that  this  has  fully  taken  place. 
Meantime,  when  citizens  of  a  state  (especially  of 
the  state  in  which  this  philosophic  insight  has  been 
achieved)  take  the  laws  of  their  state  as  their  own 
ends  and  motives  of  action,  they  attain  the  best 
possible  substitute  for  a  reason  which  is  its  own 
object.  They  appropriate  as  their  own  personal 
reason  the  objective  and  absolute  Reason  em- 
bodied perforce  in  law  and  custom. 

After  this  detour,  we  are  led  back  to  the  fact 
that  the  Germans  possess  the  greatest  freedom  yet 
attained  by  humanity,  for  the  Prussian  political 
organization  most  fully  exemplifies  Law,  or  the 
Universal,  organizing  under  and  within  itself  all 
particular  arrangements  of  social  and  personal 
life.  Some  other  peoples — particularly  the  Latin 
— have  thought  they  could  make  constitutions,  or 
at  least  that  the  form  of  their  constitution  was 
a  matter  of  choice.  But  this  is  merely  setting  up 
the  private  conceit  of  individuals  against  the  work 
of  Absolute  Reason,  and  thus  marks  the  disin- 
tegration of  a   state  rather  than   its   existence. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  117 

Other  peoples  have  tried  to  found  the  government 
on  the  consent  of  the  governed,  unwitting  of  the 
fact  that  it  is  the  government,  the  specific  realiza- 
tion of  Reason,  which  makes  a  state  out  of  what 
is  otherwise  an  anarchic  mass  of  individuals.  Other 
peoples  have  made  a  parliament  or  representative 
body  the  essential  thing  in  government;  in  philo- 
sophic reality  this  is  only  a  consultative  body, 
having  as  its  main  function  communication  between 
classes  (which  are  indispensable  to  an  "  organic  " 
state)  and  the  real  government.  The  chief  func- 
tion of  parliament  is  to  give  the  opinion  of  the 
social  classes  an  opportunity  to  feel  it  is  being 
considered  and  to  enable  the  real  government  to 
take  advantage  of  whatever  wisdom  may  chance  to 
be  expressed.  Hegel  seems  quite  prophetic  when 
he  says:  "By  virtue  of  this  participation  subjec- 
tive liberty  and  conceit,  with  their  general  opinion, 
can  show  themselves  palpably  efficacious  and  enjoy 
the  satisfaction  of  feeling  themselves  to  count  for 
something."  Finally,  the  State  becomes  wholly 
and  completely  an  organized  Individual  only  in  its 
external  relations,  its  relations  to  other  states.  As 
his  philosophy  of  history  ignores  the  past  in  seiz- 
ing upon  the  national  state  as  the  unit  and  focus 


118  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

of  history,  so  it  ignores  all  future  possibility  of 
a  genuinely  international  federation  to  which  iso- 
lated nationalism  shall  be  subordinated.  Bern- 
hardi  writes  wholly  in  the  Hegelian  sense  when  he 
says  that  to  expand  the  idea  of  the  State  into  the 
idea  of  humanity  is  a  Utopian  error,  for  it  would 
exclude  the  essential  principle  of  life,  struggle. 

Philosophical  justification  of  war  follows  inevi- 
tably from  a  philosophy  of  history  composed  in 
nationalistic  terms.  History  is  the  movement,  the 
march  of  God  on  earth  through  time.  Only  one 
nation  at  a  time  can  be  the  latest  and  hence  the 
fullest  realization  of  God.  The  movement  of  God 
in  history  is  thus  particularly  manifest  in  those 
changes  by  which  unique  place  passes  from  one 
nation  to  another.  War  is  the  signally  visible 
occurrence  of  such  a  flight  of  the  divine  spirit  in 
its  onward  movement.  The  idea  that  friendly  in- 
tercourse among  all  the  peoples  of  the  earth  is  a 
legitimate  aim  of  human  effort  is  in  basic  con- 
tradiction of  such  a  philosophy.  War  is  explicit 
realization  of  "  dialectic,"  of  the  negation  by 
which  a  higher  synthesis  of  reason  is  assured.  It 
effectively  displays  the  "  irony  of  the  divine  Idea." 
It  is  to  national  life  what  the  winds  are  to  the  sea, 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  119 

"  preserving  mankind  from  the  corruption  en- 
gendered by  immobility."  War  is  the  most  ef- 
fective preacher  of  the  vanity  of  all  merely  finite 
interests ;  it  puts  an  end  to  that  selfish  egoism  of 
the  individual  by  which  he  would  claim  his  life  and 
his  property  as  his  own  or  as  his  family's.  Inter- 
national law  is  not  properly  law;  it  expresses 
simply  certain  usages  which  are  accepted  so  long 
as  they  do  not  come  into  conflict  with  the  purpose 
of  a  state — a  purpose  which  always  gives  the 
supreme  law  of  national  life.  Particularly  against 
the  absolute  right  of  the  "  present  bearer  of  the 
world  spirit,  the  spirits  of  the  other  nations  are 
absolutely  without  right.  The  latter,  just  like 
the  nations  whose  epochs  have  passed,  count  no 
longer  in  universal  history."  Since  they  are  al- 
ready passed  over  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
divine  idea,  war  can  do  no  more  than  exhibit  the 
fact  that  their  day  has  come  and  gone.  World 
history  is  the  world's  judgment  seat. 

For  a  period  Hegelian  thought  was  almost  su- 
preme in  Germany.  Then  its  rule  passed  away 
almost  as  rapidly  as  it  had  been  achieved.  After 
various  shiftings,  the  trend  of  philosophic  thought 
was  definitely  "  Back  to  Kant."     Kant's  greater 


120  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

sobriety,  the  sharp  distinction  he  drew  between 
the  realm  of  phenomena  and  science  and  the 
ideal  noumenal  world,  commended  him  after  the 
unbridled  pretensions  of  Hegelian  absolutism. 
For  more  than  a  generation  Hegel  was  spoken  of 
with  almost  universal  contempt.  Nevertheless  his 
ideas,  loosed  from  the  technical  apparatus  with 
which  he  surrounded  them,  persisted.  Upon  the 
historical  disciplines  his  influence  was  peculiarly 
deep  and  abiding.  He  fixed  the  ideas  of  Fichte 
and  fastened  them  together  with  the  pin  of  evolu- 
tion. Since  his  day,  histories  of  philosophy,  or 
religion,  or  institutions  have  all  been  treated  as 
developments  through  necessary  stages  of  an  inner 
implicit  idea  or  purpose  according  to  an  indwelling 
law.  And  the  idea  of  a  peculiar  mission  and 
destiny  of  German  history  has  lost  nothing  in  the 
operation.  Expressions  which  a  bewildered  world 
has  sought  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  to  ex- 
plain through  the  influence  of  a  Darwinian  strug- 
gle for  existence  and  survival  of  the  fittest,  or 
through  the  influence  of  a  Nietzschean  philosophy 
of  power,  have  their  roots  in  the  classic  idealistic 
philosophy  culminating  in  Hegel. 

Kant  still  remains  the  philosopher  of  Germany. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  121 

The  division  of  life  between  the  world  of  sense  and 
of  mechanism  and  the  world  of  the  supersensible 
and  purpose,  the  world  of  necessity  and  the  world 
of  freedom,  is  more  congenial  than  a  complete 
monism.  The  attempts  of  his  successors  to  bridge 
the  gap  and  set  up  a  wholly  unified  philosophy 
failed,  historically  speaking.  But,  nevertheless, 
they  contributed  an  indispensable  ingredient  to 
the  contemporary  German  spirit;  they  helped 
people  the  Kantian  void  of  the  supersensible  with 
the  substantial  figures  of  the  State  and  its  His- 
torical Evolution  and  Mission.  Kant  bequeathed 
to  the  world  an  intellect  devoted  to  the  congenial 
task  of  discovering  causal  law  in  external  nature, 
and  an  inner  intuition  which,  in  spite  of  its  sublim- 
ity, had  nothing  to  look  at  except  the  bare  form 
of  an  empty  law  of  duty.  Kant  was  kept  busy  in 
proving  the  existence  of  this  supernal  but  empty 
region.  Consequently  he  was  not  troubled  by 
being  obliged  to  engage  in  the  unremunerative  task 
of  spending  his  time  gazing  into  a  blank  void.  His 
successors  were  not  so  fortunate.  The  existence 
of  this  ideal  realm  in  which  reason,  purpose  and 
freedom  are  one  was  axiomatic  to  them ;  they  could 
no  longer  busy  themselves  with  proving  its  exist- 


122  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

ence.  Some  of  them,  called  the  Romanticists,  filled 
it  with  visions,  more  or  less  poetic,  which  frankly 
drew  their  substance  from  an  imagination  inflamed 
by  emotional  aspiration  in  revolt  at  the  limita- 
tions of  outward  action.  Others,  called  the  ideal- 
istic philosophers,  filled  in  the  void,  dark  because 
of  excess  of  light,  with  less  ghostly  forms  of  Law 
and  the  unfolding  in  History  of  Absolute  Value 
and  Purpose.  The  two  worlds  of  Kant  were  too 
far  away  from  each  other.  The  later  idealistic 
world  constructions  crumbled;  but  their  debris 
supplied  material  with  which  to  fill  in  the  middle 
regions  between  the  Kantian  worlds  of  sense  and 
of  reason.  This,  I  repeat,  is  their  lasting  con- 
tribution to  present  German  culture.  Where 
Kantianism  has  not  received  a  filling  in  from 
the  philosophy  of  history  and  the  State,  it 
has  remained  in  Germany,  as  elsewhere,  a 
critique  of  the  methodology  of  science;  its 
importance  has  been  professional  rather  than 
human. 

In  the  first  lecture  we  set  out  with  the  sug- 
gestion of  an  inquiry  into  the  influence  of  general 
ideas  upon  practical  affairs,   upon  those  larger 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  123 

practical  affairs  called  politics.  We  appear  to 
have  concluded  with  a  conviction  that  (in  the 
instance  before  us  at  least)  politics  has  rather 
been  the  controlling  factor  in  the  formation  of 
philosophic  ideas  and  in  deciding  their  vogue. 
Yet  we  are  well  within  limits  when  we  say  that 
ideas  which  were  evoked  in  correspondence  with 
concrete  social  conditions  served  to  articulate  and 
consolidate  the  latter.  Even  if  we  went  so  far  as 
to  say  that  reigning  philosophies  simply  reflect  as 
in  a  mirror  contemporary  social  struggles,  we 
should  have  to  add  that  seeing  one's  self  in  a 
mirror  is  a  definite  practical  aid  in  carrying  on 
one's  undertaking  to  its  completion. 

When  what  a  people  sees  in  its  intellectual 
looking  glass  is  its  own  organization  and  its  own 
historic  evolution  as  an  organic  instrument  of  the 
accomplishment  of  an  Absolute  Will  and  Law,  the 
articulating  and  consolidating  efficacy  of  the  re- 
flection is  immensely  intensified.  Outside  of  Ger- 
many, the  career  of  the  German  idealistic  phi- 
losophy has  been  mainly  professional  and  literary. 
It  has  exercised  considerable  influence  upon  the 
teaching  of  philosophy  in  France,  England  and 
this  country.     Beyond  professorial  circles,  its  in- 


124  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

fluence  has  been  considerable  in  theological  direc- 
tions. Without  doubt,  it  has  modulated  for  many 
persons  the  transition  from  a  supernatural  to  a 
spiritual  religion;  it  has  enabled  them  to  give  up 
historical  and  miraculous  elements  as  indifferent 
accretions  and  to  retain  the  moral  substance  and 
emotional  values  of  Christianity.  But  the  Ger- 
mans are  quite  right  in  feeling  that  only  in  Ger- 
many is  this  form  of  idealistic  thinking  both  in- 
digenous and  widely  applied. 

A  crisis  like  the  present  forces  upon  thoughtful 
persons  a  consideration  of  the  value  for  the  gen- 
eral aims  of  civilization  of  a  philosophy  of  the 
a  priori,  the  Absolute,  and  of  their  immanent  evo- 
lution through  the  medium  of  an  experience  which 
as  just  experience  is  only  a  superficial  and 
negligible  vehicle  of  transcendent  Laws  and 
Ends.  It  forces  a  consideration  of  what  type  of 
general  ideas  is  available  for  the  articulation  and 
guidance  of  our  own  life  in  case  we  find  ourselves 
looking  upon  the  present  world  scene  as  an 
a  priori  and  an  absolutistic  philosophy  gone  into 
bankruptcy. 

In  Europe,  speaking  generally,  "  Americanism  " 
is   a  synonym  for  crude  empiricism  and   a  ma- 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  125 

tenalistic  utilitarianism.  It  is  no  part  of  my  pres- 
ent task  to  try  to  show  how  largely  this  accusation 
is  due  to  misunderstanding.  It  is  simpler  to 
inquire  how  far  the  charge  points  to  the  problem 
which  American  life,  and  therefore  philosophy  in 
America,  must  meet.  It  is  difficult  to  see  how  any 
a  priori  philosophy,  or  any  systematic  absolut- 
ism, is  to  get  a  footing  among  us,  at  least  beyond 
narrow  and  professorial  circles.  Psychologists 
talk  about  learning  by  the  method  of  trial  and 
error  or  success.  Our  social  organization  com- 
mits us  to  this  philosophy  of  life.  Our  working 
principle  is  to  try:  to  find  out  by  trying,  and  to 
measure  the  worth  of  the  ideas  and  theories  tried 
by  the  success  with  which  they  meet  the  test  of 
application  in  practice.  Concrete  consequences 
rather  than  a  priori  rules  supply  our  guiding  prin- 
ciples. Hegel  found  it  "  superficial  and  absurd  to 
regard  as  objects  of  choice  "  social  constitutions ; 
to  him  "  they  were  necessary  structures  in  the 
path  of  development."  To  us  they  are  the  cumu- 
lative result  of  a  multitude  of  daily  and  ever- 
renewed  choices. 

That  such  an  experimental  philosophy  of  life 
means  a  dangerous  experiment  goes  without  say- 


126  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

ing.  It  permits,  sooner  or  later  it  may  require, 
every  alleged  sacrosanct  principle  to  submit  to 
ordeal  by  fire — to  trial  by  service  rendered.  From 
the  standpoint  of  a  priorism,  it  is  hopelessly 
anarchic ;  it  is  doomed,  a  priori,  to  failure.  From 
its  own  standpoint,  it  is  itself  a  theory  to  be  tested 
by  experience.  Now  experiments  are  of  all  kinds, 
varying  from  those  generated  by  blind  impulse  and 
appetite  to  those  guided  by  intelligently  formed 
ideas.  They  are  as  diverse  as  the  attempt  of  a 
savage  to  get  rain  by  sprinkling  water  and  scat- 
tering thistledown,  and  that  control  of  electricity 
in  the  laboratory  from  which  issue  wireless  teleg- 
raphy and  rapid  traction.  Is  it  not  likely  that  in 
this  distinction  we  have  the  key  to  the  failure  or 
success  of  the  experimental  method  generalized 
into  a  philosophy  of  life,  that  is  to  say,  of  social 
matters — the  only  application  which  procures 
complete  generalization  ? 

An  experimental  philosophy  differs  from  em- 
pirical philosophy  as  empiricism  has  been  previ- 
ously formulated.  Historical  empiricisms  have 
been  stated  in  terms  of  precedents ;  their  general- 
izations have  been  summaries  of  what  has  previ- 
ously happened.     The  truth  and  falsity  of  these 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  127 

generalizations  depended  then  upon  the  accuracy 
with  which  they  catalogued,  under  appropriate 
heads,  a  multiplicity  of  past  occurrences.  They 
were  perforce  lacking  in  directive  power  except  so 
far  as  the  future  might  be  a  routine  repetition  of 
the  past.  In  an  experimental  philosophy  of  life, 
the  question  of  the  past,  of  precedents,  of  origins, 
is  quite  subordinate  to  prevision,  to  guidance  and 
control  amid  future  possibilities.  Consequences 
rather  than  antecedents  measure  the  worth  of 
theories.  Any  scheme  or  project  may  have  a  fair 
hearing  provided  it  promise  amelioration  in  the 
future;  and  no  theory  or  standard  is  so  sacred 
that  it  may  be  accepted  simply  on  the  basis  of 
past  performance. 

But  this  difference  between  a  radically  experi- 
mental philosophy  and  an  empiristic  philosophy 
only  emphasizes  the  demand  for  careful  and  com- 
prehensive reflection  with  respect  to  the  ideas 
which  are  to  be  tested  in  practice.  If  an  a  priori 
philosophy  has  worked  at  all  in  Germany  it  is  be- 
cause it  has  been  based  on  an  a  priori  social  con- 
stitution— that  is  to  say,  on  a  state  whose  organ- 
ization is  such  as  to  determine  in  advance  the  main 
activities  of  classes  of  individuals,  and  to  utilize 


128  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

their  particular  activities  by  linking  them  up  with 
one  another  in  definite  ways.  It  is  a  commonplace 
to  say  that  Germany  is  a  monument  to  what  can 
be  done  by  means  of  conscious  method  and  organ- 
ization. An  experimental  philosophy  of  life  in 
order  to  succeed  must  not  set  less  store  upon 
methodic  and  organized  intelligence,  but  more. 
We  must  learn  from  Germany  what  methodic  and 
.  organized  work  means.  But  instead  of  confining 
intelligence  to  the  technical  means  of  realizing 
ends  which  are  predetermined  by  the  State  (or  by 
something  called  the  historic  Evolution  of  the 
Idea),  intelligence  must,  with  us,  devote  itself  as 
well  to  construction  of  the  ends  to  be  acted  upon. 
The  method  of  trial  and  error  or  success  is 
likely,  if  not  directed  by  a  trained  and  informed 
imagination,  to  score  an  undue  proportion  of  fail- 
ures. There  is  no  possibility  of  disguising  the 
fact  that  an  experimental  philosophy  of  life  means 
a  hit-and-miss  philosophy  in  the  end.  But  it 
means  missing  rather  than  hitting,  if  the  aiming 
is  done  in  a  happy-go-lucky  way  instead  of  by 
bringing  to  bear  all  the  resources  of  inquiry  upon 
locating  the  target,  constructing  propulsive  ma- 
chinery and  figuring  out  the  curve  of  trajectory. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  129 

That  this  work  is,  after  all,  but  hypothetical  and 
tentative  till  it  issue  from  thought  into  action 
does  not  mean  that  it  might  as  well  be  random 
guesswork;  it  means  that  we  can  do  still  better 
next  time  if  we  are  sufficiently  attentive  to  the 
causes  of  success  and  failure  this  time. 

America  is  too  new  to  afford  a  foundation  for 
an  a  priori  philosophy;  we  have  not  the  requisite 
background  of  law,  institutions  and  achieved  social 
organization.  America  is  too  new  to  render  con- 
genial to  our  imagination  an  evolutionary  phi- 
losophy of  the  German  type.  For  our  history  is 
too  obviously  future.  Our  country  is  too  big 
and  too  unformed,  however,  to  enable  us  to  trust 
to  an  empirical  philosophy  of  muddling  along, 
patching  up  here  and  there  some  old  piece 
of  machinery  which  has  broken  down  by  reason 
of  its  antiquity.  We  must  have  system,  con- 
structive method,  springing  from  a  widely  in- 
ventive imagination,  a  method  checked  up  at  each 
turn  by  results  achieved.  We  have  said  long 
enough  that  America  means  opportunity ;  we  must 
now  begin  to  ask :  Opportunity  for  what,  and  how 
shall  the  opportunity  be  achieved  ?  I  can  but  think 
that  the  present  European  situation  forces  home 


130  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

upon  us  the  need  for  constructive  planning.  I 
can  but  think  that  while  it  gives  no  reason  for 
supposing  that  creative  power  attaches  ex  officio 
to  general  ideas,  it  does  encourage  us  to  believe 
that  a  philosophy  which  should  articulate  and  con- 
solidate the  ideas  to  which  our  social  practice  com- 
mits us  would  clarify  and  guide  our  future  en- 
deavor. 

Time  permits  of  but  one  illustration.  The  pres- 
ent situation  presents  the  spectacle  of  the  break- 
down of  the  whole  philosophy  of  Nationalism, 
political,  racial  and  cultural.  It  is  by  the  acci- 
dent of  position  rather  than  any  virtue  of  our 
own  that  we  are  not  sharers  in  the  present  demon- 
stration of  failure.  We  have  borrowed  the  older 
philosophy  of  isolated  national  sovereignty  and 
have  lived  upon  it  in  a  more  or  less  half-hearted 
way.  In  our  internal  constitution  we  are  actu- 
ally interracial  and  international.  It  remains  to 
see  whether  we  have  the  courage  to  face  this  fact 
and  the  wisdom  to  think  out  the  plan  of  action 
which  it  indicates.  Arbitration  treaties,  interna- 
tional judicial  councils,  schemes  of  international 
disarmament,  peace  funds  and  peace  movements, 
are  all  well  in  their  way.    But  the  situation  calls  for 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY  131 

more  radical  thinking  than  that  which  terminates 
in  such  proposals.  We  have  to  recognize  that 
furtherance  of  the  depth  and  width  of  human  in- 
tercourse is  the  measure  of  civilization;  and  we 
have  to  apply  this  fact  without  as  well  as  within 
our  national  life.  We  must  make  the  accident 
of  our  internal  composition  into  an  idea,  an 
idea  upon  which  we  may  conduct  our  foreign  as 
well  as  our  domestic  policy.  An  international 
judicial  tribunal  will  break  in  the  end  upon  the 
principle  of  national  sovereignty. 

We  have  no  right  to  cast  stones  at  any  warring 
nation  till  we  have  asked  ourselves  whether  we  are 
willing  to  forego  this  principle  and  to  submit  af- 
fairs which  limited  imagination  and  sense  have  led 
us  to  consider  strictly  national  to  an  international 
legislature.  In  and  of  itself,  the  idea  of  peace  is 
a  negative  idea;  it  is  a  police  idea.  There  are 
things  more  important  than  keeping  one's  body 
whole  and  one's  property  intact.  Disturbing  the 
peace  is  bad,  not  because  peace  is  disturbed,  but 
because  the  fruitful  processes  of  cooperation  in 
the  great  experiment  of  living  together  are  dis- 
turbed. It  is  futile  to  work  for  the  negative  end 
of  peace  unless  we  are  committed  to  the  positive 


132  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 

ideal  which  it  cloaks:  Promoting  the  efficacy  of 
human  intercourse  irrespective  of  class,  racial, 
geographical  and  national  limits.  Any  philosophy 
which  should  penetrate  and  particulate  our  present 
social  practice  would  find  at  work  the  forces  which 
unify  human  intercourse.  An  intelligent  and 
courageous  philosophy  of  practice  would  devise 
means  by  which  the  operation  of  these  forces 
would  be  extended  and  assured  in  the  future. 
An  American  philosophy  of  history  must  perforce 
be  a  philosophy  for  its  future,  a  future  in  which 
freedom  and  fullness  of  human  companionship  is 
the  aim,  and  intelligent  cooperative  experimenta- 
tion the  method. 


THE   END 


INDEX 


Absolutism,   89,   112,   115,   124 
America,    philosophy    in,    123- 

132 
"Americanism,"   124 
Anti-Semitism,  100-101. 
A  priori,  39-44,  126,  129 
Authority,   52-54 

Bentham,  56 

Bergsori,  4 

Bernhardi,  34-35,  52,   118 

Bourdon,    107-108 

Burke,  93-94 

Chamberlain,  101  n. 
Cosmopolitanism,    67,    75,    85, 

99 
Culture,  91 

Descartes,  92 

Despotism  enlightened,  53 
Dialectic,  70,  118 
Duty,  24,  50-57 

Education,  14,  72,  73 
Empiricism,  41,  43,   126-129 
Enlightenment,  the,  37-39,  59, 

92,  103 
Eucken,  36,  55 
Evolution,  112 

Fichte,   68-80,  85-87 

Formalism,   51 

Freedom,  18,  25,  30,  33-35,  47, 

51,    71,    115. 
French  Revolution,  57,  94,  103 
French  thought,  52,  91-94,  95, 

100 


Germania,  104 

Germany,  14-16,  28,  29-31,  32- 

33,  36,  71,  78-81,  84-85,  88, 

91-93,  94-98,  106-107 

Haym,  107 

Hegel,  94-95,  107-120,  125 

Heine,  17,  18,  76,  83,  84-85 

Herder,  112 

History,     5-6,     59-67,     98-102, 

107-119,   121 
Hoffman,  81 

Idealism,   28,   39,   70,   82,   107, 

123,    130 
Ideas    and    action,    3-15,    123- 

132 
Individualism,  49,  72 
Intelligence,   54-56,    126-128 

Jena,  68 

Kant,  19-40,  47-58,  59-67,  119- 

121 
Kultur,  62-64 

Lange,  78 
Lasalle,  77 
Law,  20-25,   116 
Leibniz,   59,    112 
Luther,   16,  27,  71,  87 

Marx,  6,  110  n. 
Militarism,    52 

Napoleon,  67,  78-79 
Nationalism,    67,    81,    86,    87, 

115 
Nietzsche,  28,  34,  58 


133 


134 


INDEX 


Pantheism,   77,   82 
Parliaments,  117 
Personality,  48 
Pfleiderer,    105 
Philosophy,  7-18,  123-132 
Property,   74 
Psychology,   Social,  82 

Race,   100-101 
Religion,  20-21,  26-27,  95 
Rights,   52,   57 
Romanticism,  81,  104,  122 
Rousseau,  61,  91 

Schelling,  82  n. 
Scholar,  72 
Science,    21-23,    28 
Socialism,    74-75 
Social  motives,  60-61 


Society,  64-65 

State,  64-65,  66-67,  73-77,  110- 

118 
Subjectivism,   49,  81 
Supersensible,  23-25 
v.  Sybel,  78-80 

Tacitus,    104 
Taine,  14 

Universalism  of  Germany,  36, 

106-107 
Urvolk,  101-102 
Utilitarianism,  57-58 

Volk-seele,  82 

War,  35-36,  89,  97,  118-120 
World-herces,  112 


DEWEY  AND  TUFTS'S  ETHICS 

By  John  Dewey,  Professor  in  Columbia  University,  and 
James  H.  Tufts,  Professor  in  the  University  of  Chi- 
cago.    (American  Science  Series.)    618  pp.    8vo.    $2.00. 

G.  H.  Palmer,  Professor  in  Harvard  University;  It  is  a 
scholarly  and  stimulating  production,  the  best,  I  think,  for  college 
use  that  has  yet  appeared.  Indeed,  from  no  other  book  would  a 
general  reader  obtain  in  so  brief  a  compass  so  wide  a  view  of  the 
moral  work  of  to-day,  set  forth  in  so  positive,  lucid  and  interesting 
a  fashion.  Twenty  years  ago  the  book  could  not  have  been  written, 
for  into  it  have  gone  the  spoils  of  all  the  ethical  battles  of  our 
time.  While  I  often  find  myself  in  dissent  from  its  opinions, 
I  see  that  whoever  wishes  to  comprehend  the  deeper  social  ten- 
dencies of  recent  years  will  do  well  to  study  this  book,  and  that  he 
will  carry  away  from  his  reading  as  much  enjoyment  as  instruction. 

Professor  Norman  Wilde  of  the  University  of  Minnesota 
in  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods: 
If  this  is  not  the  ideal  text -book  in  ethics  for  which  we  have  been 
waiting  so  many  years,  it  is,  at  least,  a  very  good  substitute  for  it. 
Certainly  no  more  valuable  fruit  of  the  recent  ethical  revival  has 
been  produced  than  this,  nor  one  which  will  itself  produce  more 
future  good,  for  it  is  bound  to  be  but  the  first  of  a  new  type  of 
texts.  It  marks  the  end  of  the  abstract,  speculative  treatises  and 
the  beginning  of  the  positive  studies  of  established  human  values. 
The  moral  life  is  presented  as  a  reality  about  which  there  can  be 
no  more  question  tnan  about  the  reality  of  the  physical  life,  and, 
indeed,  as  that  in  which  the  latter  finds  its  completion  and  ex- 
planation. Theories  and  systems  are  strictly  subordinated  to  the 
facts  and  are  not  presented  until  the  facts  are  clearly  given.  No 
student  can  rise  from  the  study  of  this  book  feeling  that  he  has 
been  engaged  with  questions  of  purely  academic  interest.  On  the 
contrary,  he  can  not  but  realize  that  it  is  the  origin  and  solution  of 
the  problems  of  his  own  life  with  which  he  is  here  concerned. 
Reality  is  the  dominant  note  of  the  book. 

The  Outlook  :  In  several  respects  this  work,  among  the 
many  of  its  kind  appearing  in  recent  years,  is  eminently  valuable, 
especially  for  the  ample  treatment  given  to  ethics  in  the  world  of 
action  in  civil  society,  admidst  the  relations  of  political,  economic, 
and  family  life.  To  trace  the  growth  of  morality,  and  to  discover 
its  laws  and  principles,  with  a  view  to  their  application  to  present 
social  conditions  and  problems  for  progressive  moral  development, 
is  the  proper  aim  of  ethical  science  as  here  unfolded.  .  .  .  The 
many  ethical  questions  raised  by  present  economic  conditions  are 
treated  with  admirable  fulness  and  perspicacity. 

HENRY   HOLT  AND   COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


BERGSON'S  CREATIVE  EVOLUTION 

Translated  from  the  French  by  1>r.  Arthur  Sffltchett 

$3.00  net,  by  mail  $3.17 

"Bergson's  resources  in  the  way  of  erudition  are  remark- 
able, and  in  the  way  of  expression  they  are  simply  phe- 
nomenal. ...  If  anything  can  make  hard  things  easy  to 
follow  it  is  a  style  like  Bergson's.  It  is  a  miracle  and  he 
a  real  magician.  Open  Bergson  and  new  horizons  open 
on  every  page  you  read.  It  tells  of  reality  itself  instead 
of  reiterating  what  dusty-minded  professors  have  written 
about  what  other  previous  professors  have  thought.  Nothing 
in  Bergson  is  shopworn  or  at  second-hand." — William  James. 

"A  distinctive  and  trenchant  piece  of  dialectic.  .  .  .  Than 
its  entrance  upon  the  field  as  a  well-armed  and  militant 
philosophy  there  have  been  not  many  more  memorable  occur- 
ences in  the  history  of  ideas." — Nation. 

"To  bring  out  in  an  adequate  manner  the  effect  which 
Bergson's  philsophy  has  on  those  who  are  attracted  by  it 
let  us  try  to  imagine  what  it  would  have  been  like  to  have 
lived  when  Kant  produced  his  'Critique  of  Pure  Reason.'"— 
Hibbert  Journal 

"Creative  Evolution  is  destined,  I  believe,  to  mark  an 
epoch  in  the  history  of  modern  thought.  The  work  has  its 
root  in  modern  physical  science,  but  it  blooms  and  bears 
fruit  in  the  spirit  to  a  degree  quite  unprecedented.  .  .  . 
Bergson  is  a  new  star  in  the  intellectual  firmament  of  our 
day.  He  is  a  philosopher  upon  whom  the  spirits  of  both 
literature  and  science  have  descended.  In  his  great  work 
he  touches  the  materialism  of  science  to  finer  issues.  Prob- 
ably no  other  writer  of  our  time  has  possessed  in  the  same 
measure  the  three  gifts,  the  literary,  the  scientific,  and  the 
philosophical.  Bergson  is  a  kind  of  chastened  and  spirit- 
ualized Herbert  Spencer."— John  Burroughs  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly. 

HENRY     HOLT     AND     COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


BY       WALTER       LIPPMANN 

DRIFT  AND  MASTERY 
2nd  Printing,  $1.50  Net 
Theodore  Roosevelt  in  The  Outlook: 

"No  man  who  wishes  seriously  to  study  our  present 
social,  industrial  and  political  life  can  afford  not  to  read 
it  through  and  through  and  to  ponder  and  digest  it." 

William  Marion  Reedy  in  The  St.  Louis  Mirror: 

"When  'A  Preface  to  Polities'  was  published,  I  ven- 
tured the  opinion  that  it  was  the  best  book  on  politics  since 
Walter  Bagehot's  'Physics  and  Politics.'  Now  he  has  fol- 
lowed it  with  'Drift  and  Mastery,'  an  even  more  brilliant 
performance." 

A  PREFACE  TO  POLITICS 
3rd  Printing,  $1.50  Net 
The  Boston  Transcript: 

"  'A  Preface  to  Politics  is  its  own  complete  and  suffi- 
cient justification.  In  many  respects  it  is  the  ablest  brief 
book  of  its  kind  published  during  the  last  ten  years.  It 
has  the  supreme  virtue  of  clearness  aided  by  a  style  that 
is  incisive  and  compelling." 

THE  STAKES  OF  DIPLOMACY 

4th  Printing,  cloth,  $1.35  Net;  paper,  60  cts.  Net 

J.  B.  Kerfoot  in  Life: 

"It  is  a  real  joy  to  find  it  of  the  same  order  as  'A 
Preface  to  Politics.'  It  deals  with  human  nature  involved 
in  international  human  relations  impersonally,  yet  brings 
significances  personally  home  to  us.  A  book  that  widens 
horizons  and  quickens  consciousness." 

HENRY     HOLT     AND     COMPANY 

Publishers  New  York 


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